Welcome back to Pressing Concerns, the almost-weekly new music column on Rosy Overdrive. Today I’m highlighting new albums from Downhaul, Jill Whit, and Mike Uva, as well as an upcoming J. Marinelli EP.
Look for an end-of-May playlist post later this week or early next week (check the April one for what to expect with that), and in the meantime you can browse previous Pressing Concerns for hours of good new music.
Downhaul – PROOF
Release date: May 21st Record label: Refresh Genre: Emo, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Eyesight
The cover art for Downhaul’s PROOF is on my shortlist for album artwork of the year. The photograph, taken by Norwegian artist Øystein Aspelund, is of a silhouette standing in front of the headlights of a car pulled off to the side of a small winding Scandinavian road, and mirrors the thematic heaviness, sonic darkness, and visible light that’s contained in the Richmond band’s second album and fifth overall release. PROOF, produced by Chris Teti of The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, is an album carefully crafted to give off a serious, smoldering listening experience for the entirety of its ten tracks. Even when lead vocalist Gordon Phillips raises his voice to find a bit of extra emotion, its stoic drawl is still a grounding force throughout PROOF’s instrumental controlled burn, led by Phillips’ prominent baritone guitar. Downhaul are so steadfast in their commitment to this titanic sound that small touches that wouldn’t merit much notice in most other similar emo-influenced rock albums—such as the short acoustic interlude track “The Ladder”—come across as jarring in comparison.
The baritone six-string is an under-utilized instrument that’s perfect for emotional daggers of rock albums like PROOF, and it reminds me of one of my favorite bands of all-time, Bottomless Pit, whose Tim Midyett similarly used its tones to probe harrowing thematic depths. While Bottomless Pit was lyrically reckoning with the death of a former bandmate, the losses and trials Phillips and Downhaul face feel ultimately within one’s own self. PROOF doesn’t hold one’s hand from the get-go, beginning with the seven-minute “Bury”, which is about suffocating baggage and the struggle to toss it off. “It’s all too often a wayward comment can derail five years of progress”, confesses Phillips over pounding percussion. While “Bury” contains imagery of stepping back from the brink and pressing on after personal failure, it becomes clear that this struggle can’t end so easily. Reflecting on the dissolution of something between two people merely one song later in “Dried”, Phillips turns the album’s underlying damage towards himself explicitly: “Gordon, get it together / You’re supposed to be better/…/So tell me right now if I’m wasting my time here”, he rages against himself in one of PROOF’s most dramatic moments.
The specter of collapsed relationships, both romantic and otherwise, hovers over PROOF: “I’ve been a poor friend / A dozen friendships I let fade in great passivity”, observes Phillips in “Circulation”, displaying little confidence in the moment that this will change, and nobody’s in their best moment when declaring “You’ve got me dead to rights, another spineless hypocrite” as he does in “Curtains”. On album closer “About Leaving”, Phillips comes off more clear-eyed and Downhaul tie together a lot of what’s seething under PROOF. Both the song title (which comes from a 2017 Downhaul EP) and its music (which recalls the alt-country of earlier Downhaul releases, right up to a cathartic twangy guitar solo) bring long-standing elements of the band to the forefront, while Phillips finally responds to the question of “proof” that was introduced in “Bury”. Phillips runs through a list of personal improvement goals, including a vow to “chase the ways that we felt before this stood ten feet tall”. This metaphorical object is still standing right in front of him, but after everything else in PROOF, Downhaul doesn’t sound daunted at the notion of scaling that canyon. (Bandcamp link)
Jill Whit – Time Is Being
Release date: May 28th Record label: Orindal Genre: Synthpop, ambient pop, spoken word Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Internet Cowboy
This year has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, a good one for unabashedly introspective songwriting, and it’s been a banner year for albums that incorporate spoken-word poetry into musical compositions as well. I’ve already heard great albums from Anika Pyle and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that fall under the category of the latter, and now Salt Lake City songwriter Jill Whit has put out a record that merits a seat at this particular table. Time Is Being was birthed from isolation in 2020, which Whit addresses head-on in the spoken-word opening track “Touchless” and the instrumental “Quarantine”. Most of Time Is Being is more interested in where this isolation leads Whit, however. On one end of this spectrum is “Windows”, a very passive song vividly describes both time and Whit herself slipping away (“Like something you can’t hold”, she says of herself). But Time Is Being also contains “Maybe Means No”, a half spoken/half sung list of resolutions Whit is actively making with herself: to take care of herself, to appreciate simple things, to feel worthy of the appreciation of others, to breathe, and so forth. “Maybe Means No” is about using “true silence” to discover new things about one’s self; in Whit’s case, it’s realizing how the titular phrase applies to her feelings, among other developments.
Time Is Being is an “ambient pop” album, and while the spacious atmospherics may be its more immediately noticeable feature, it doesn’t skimp on the “pop” front either. The first non-spoken track, “Internet Cowboy”, floats along for two minutes and lets Whit’s voice and lyrics (“Your love is so simple / Like a river that runs while I’m standing still”) take the record to a completely different place than the poetry pieces, despite having the same surface-level ingredients. Some of the more melodic moments on Time Is Being evoke the feeling of timeless—pre rock-and-roll even—pop songwriting, which is remarkable for a synth-driven ambient record, but does feel like a deliberate juxtaposition from the moment the phrase “internet cowboy” enters one’s mind. The most obvious example of this is in “Make It Seem True”, in which Whit sings what could pass for doo-wop lyrics over top of minimal synth touches, and her version of Merle Haggard’s “I Always Get Lucky with You” is the like a positively giddy mirror image of the former song’s heartbreak. The cassette release of the album comes with a zine of photos and drawings by Whit that underlines the record’s strength, which is that it doesn’t just say that Time Is Being—it shows it, too. (Bandcamp link)
J. Marinelli – Fjorden & Fjellet
Release date: June 4th Record label: Commodity Fetish Genre: Lo-fi pop rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Worker and Parasite
Nearly twenty releases and fifteen years into his solo career, the Norway-based, West Virginia-originating J. Marinelli has changed up his sound for his latest EP. After putting his time in recording and performing as a “one-man punk band”, which had entailed manning a crude drumset with his feet while hammering things out on the six-string, Marinelli has taken the unthinkable step of recording his instruments separately for the Fjorden & Fjellet EP. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still on the side of lo-fi—if you enjoyed last year’s Laughing All the Way to the Fretex (one of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite albums of 2020) then this isn’t a huge departure. However, the four songs on Fjorden & Fjellet hint at some newfound freedom into which to roam: Bass guitar! Less rudimentary drumming! And handclaps! Lots of handclaps!
Although he may be undergoing a sort of musical evolution, songcraft-wise Fjorden & Fjellet is still vintage Marinelli, continuing his Appalachian spin on Robert Pollard-esque lo-fi pop rock. Three of these tracks are short, sweet, straightforwardly-catchy numbers, but as breezy as they sound, they resist easy lyrical interpretation. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, Marinelli still manages to be evocative: “Where they’d have us swim / See them muddying the water so we cannot see the shallowness therein” from the opening track is his own version of punk rock agitating and sloganeering. Closer “Worker and Parasite” is perhaps the most interesting moment on Fjorden & Fjellet, in the way it seems to use the political as a metaphor for the personal (or is it the other way around?). Either way, “There’s no struggle quite like your fight for attention” is a great one-liner in any context, and Marinelli harmonizing with himself is a nice surprise. The EP’s one outlier, the lumbering, three-minute “Dinosaur Dan”, presents as a less immediate but still intriguing alternate path forward. These songs were culled from a fertile songwriting period for Marinelli—as a preview for the proper full-length follow-up to Fretex, it’s undeniably appetite-whetting. (Bandcamp link)
Mike Uva – Are You Dreaming
Release date: May 14th Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi, indie folk, jangle pop Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Safety Zone
Cleveland’s Mike Uva has been making his own style of lo-fi folk rock since the beginning of the century, although it sounds like he’s shaken up his creative process for his latest album. The songs on last month’s Are You Dreaming began in late 2019 as electric guitar improvisations, and their development also found Uva experimenting with phone recording and beat-making. Although he’d intended to continue to flesh them out, Uva decided to leave them mostly as-is, with only drum overdub from Elliott Hoffman transforming them from their original state, and then topping it off with cover art drawn by his son. Nearly half of the album’s eight songs are instrumental guitar meanderings (one of them is literally titled “Meander”), and it gives the album a very casual feel, allowing the “proper” songs to float in and out of focus as the instrumentation washes over Are You Dreaming. These passages on Are You Dreaming can lull the listener into missing that there are some very strong songs hidden within the album, until they sneak up on you after a few listens.
The first song with vocals, “Safety Zone”, lays out a lazy, languid hook that has only grown on me, and accents it with some tuneful keyboard. Uva’s sincerely confident vocals help make “Oh for the Day” sound particularly like something that could’ve come from Woodsist Records, although it’s far from the only moment on the record that does this— the rustic feel of the entire of Are You Dreaming evokes Woods and other bands of their ilk. The only song that doesn’t feel descended from the album’s electric guitar origins is the title track, with the electric only contributing some musical accents to what’s otherwise the album’s most straightforward folk song. Though these songs may have started out as “noodling”, all the songs with vocals feel like fully-formed compositions, with the exception of the one-minute closer “Hollywood Dancer”. That track, which begins as another instrumental passage before the actual forty-second acoustic song begins, feels more like a snippet, like one of the brief but captivating interlude songs on Alien Lanes or Lolita Nation. In Uva’s context, it’s a deliberate tribute to immediacy, much like the appeal of the simple drawing on the cover of Are You Dreaming. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: May 28th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Country-folk Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Wyoming County
The last album I heard (and wrote about) from Philadelphia’s Dear Life Records was MJ Lenderman’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, whose punk influence and lo-fi recording put it firmly on the “alt” end of alt-country. Durham, North Carolina’s Fust share some surface genre-level similarity with their label-mate on their debut album, but they approach their musical influences more traditionally. Evil Joy is a record of gentle, deliberate, and clear Americana/folk rock that evokes the work of troubadours like Richard Buckner and Bill Callahan. Fust bandleader Aaron Dowdy particularly reminds me of early Buckner albums in the way he can spin memorable songs out of little more than a wearily melodic vocal and relatively sparse instrumentation. The tracks on Evil Joy are all pleasantly hummable—Dowdy turns the title of “When the Trial Ends” into an inviting vocal hook for a song about picking up the pieces of something shattered together on one’s own, and when he sings “But they’ve got better things to do / Then sitting around here, loving you” in “Night on the Lam”, his confident voice belies the line’s role in a lyric about making mistakes with one’s friends that can’t be reversed no matter how hard one may try.
Similarly to the work of the folk singers mentioned previously as musical reference points, Evil Joy has some deep and occasionally dark introspection going on beneath its breezy surface. The album has been described by the band as a narrative that follows the emotional ups and downs of a deteriorating relationship. Dowdy alludes to this throughline across the record in references to leaving and of being released (one doesn’t have to dig much deeper than some of the song titles, which include “The Last Days”, “The Day That You Went Away”, and “When the Trial Ends”). There’s even a rough timeline if you try to put everything together—the rewarding but difficult April, the summer of “pitiful shame”, the day in August where one person in the relationship returned. Even though Evil Joy feels like an album written in the past tense, much of it is spent reckoning with matters that don’t seem wholly resolved. Dowdy’s lyrics seem preoccupied with being “wrong”, and with feeling the “wrong” way about major life decisions and events—the idea of experiencing “evil” joy instead of the “pure” version. The contradiction at the heart of the album’s title seems to point towards the emotional turmoil of watching something die between two people, and the oddness inherent in experiencing positive emotions at the death of something. Contradiction is another preoccupation of Evil Joy, like in “Long Hard Days in April” where Dowdy yearns to “go back, forever” to those hard days.
“Wyoming County” ends the record on a note of finality that Evil Joy hadn’t quite achieved up until those last couple of minutes. The closing song is able to look at the album’s central relationship with fresh eyes, and only then can Dowdy fully realize that it has run its course (“I looked and you and I thought / How I could live without you / Even though we had a good day”). It’s Evil Joy’s most upbeat number, beginning with Dowdy literally singing about driving down the highway as a way to cope with the physical and emotional departure of a partner, and against all odds it works as a windows-down car song. The track ends with an instrumental outro marked by a triumphant mid-tempo guitar solo that serves as the album’s punctuation mark. “It was almost like we were still in love in Wyoming County,” sings Dowdy, and it’s clear that he and Fust are riding off into the wild blue yonder without being haunted by coming just shy, close but not quite. (Bandcamp link)
Paper Mice – 1-800-MONDAYS
Release date: May 7th Record label: Three One G Genre: Math rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: The Cynic Route
The first album in eight years from the math rock trio Paper Mice is a recording from a world of fear, stupidity, anger, and flammability (Did I mention they’re from Chicago?). Nomeansno is a clear influence, and the band also cite The Beach Boys, whose impact on Paper Mice manifests itself in the warped catchiness the songs on 1-800-MONDAYS possess, the vocal harmonies peppered throughout the album, and the orchestral touches in “Trial by Fire” and “The Cynic Route”. A contemporary point of reference might be the math rock side of fellow Chicagoan NNAMDÏ, who has toured with the band and directed a music video for the album. Paper Mice continue their songwriting method of taking inspiration from oddly humorous news headlines for the album, with an emphasis on darker subjects this time around. “Fight Fire with Firearms” kicks off 1-800-MONDAYS with a vignette of a man whose van full of guns and ammunition goes down in flames, and both fire (“Trial by Fire”, about a lawyer whose pants catch on fire) and firearms (“Taking the Heat”, an exhausting and circular song about exhausting and circular gun control debates) weigh heavily on 1-800-MONDAYS.
The album’s title track is a pretty clear lamentation of the cumulative effects of ocean pollution (sample lyric: “But that’s in the past, now at last everything is fantastic / No it isn’t, I was being sarcastic”), and “For the Birds” (about a parrot who returns to his owner speaking Spanish after being gone for several few years) could be a metaphor for all sorts of things, but Paper Mice wisely let the absurdity stand on its own. 1-800-MONDAYS does a lot of letting these stories stand on their alone, for the listener to sort through to their own ends. One can gravitate towards the way irrational hatred leads people to do stupid things that endanger themselves, like the man who tries to kill a spider with a lighter at a gas station in “Fight Spider with Fire”, or one can read a sort of odd nobility to the Russian pedestrians who try to dress up as a school bus in a futile attempt to cross a vehicles-only bridge in Vladivostok (“The Cynic Route”). 1-800-MONDAYS remains a unique and captivating listen either way. (Bandcamp link)
HUSHPUPPY – Singles Club (Remastered)
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Babe City Genre: Lo-fi indie rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: I’m at Home with You
I was unfamiliar with HUSHPUPPY’S Zoë Brecher before I stumbled onto last month’s Singles Club, although perhaps I should have been, as the New York drummer has played with several bands and acts I care about, including Sad13, Kalbells, and King Tuff. Even though this collection of songs seems to be the first time Brecher’s solo work has seen a relatively wide release, she’s been making music on her own for several years now. Even the tracks that make up Singles Club have been around for awhile, having been “semi-secretly” released on Bandcamp five years ago. Brecher collected a dozen of these recordings and, as the title suggests, had them remastered (by Amar Lal of Big Ups) for a cassette from Babe City.
Singles Club does resemble an album with humble origins—Brecher plows through twelve songs in seventeen minutes, and they do have a slapdash, home-recorded feel to them. Some of these tracks, like the 45-second slice of bedroom pop “I Wanna Be Your GF”, feel like they’re over as soon as they began, and the production and brevity give Singles Club a sincere immediacy. This only works to serve the tracks’ subject matters, with songs like “If Only You Were My Girl” and “I Like Girls” being open treatises on queer romance, longing, and loneliness. Still, Brecher doesn’t overly commit to quick runtimes and lo-fi distortion when it’s not what suits the song. “I’m at Home with You” is a highlight because it sounds clean, Brecher’s voice is front and center, and it feels like it accomplishes a lot in two minutes. Album closer “Alone with Me” splits the difference—it slows the tempo down, but the recording still feels like it could fall apart at any moment. It never does, though, instead bringing Singles Club across the finish line on a bittersweet but relatable note. (Bandcamp link)
Speak, Memory – Adirondack
Release date: May 21st Record label: Clerestory AV Genre: Emo, post-rock, math rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Lakes
Oklahoma City trio Speak, Memory make a mostly-instrumental, expressive strain of emo and post-rock. Adirondack is the band’s first release since 2014, and a lot has changed over the past seven years, including the band’s original bass player, Bartees Strange, becoming one of the hottest names in indie rock. Strange mixed Adirondack, whose three songs were recorded in late 2019, a couple of months before the onset of another “big thing” that’s happened since Speak, Memory’s debut EP. Adirondack is bookended by “Trails” and “Cabin”, two long and twinkly instrumentals. Both of them flow, ebb, and contain multiple distinct “parts”, but the opening “Trails” in particular maintains a steady feeling of hopeful optimism throughout its musical shifts. “Lakes” is the odd song out—for one, it’s the only song under four minutes long, and it’s also the only one of the three to feature vocals.
Guitarist Timothy Miller only sings a few lines towards the back end of “Lakes”, however, and they’re easy to blink and miss, especially after the first half of the track. Even more so than the vocals, the song is striking because of how it tumbles out of the gate instrumentally, with galloping, four-minute-mile drums and appropriately matching tossed-off guitar riffs. The closing “Cabin” eventually reaches the same propulsive, charging drive as “Lakes”, but it takes its time getting there. The first three minutes of “Cabin” are the calmest moments on Adirondack, so much so that the song’s initial build-up reverts back to the calmness before the real peak happens. The final two-minute crescendo is the closest to the feeling of cresting the top of one of the mountains for which Adirondack is named. Or, I suppose, it’s what I imagine the feeling of climbing to the top of a mountain feels like; I’m more than happy to stay at home and let Speak, Memory do the work of taking me there in spirit. (Bandcamp link)
Today I’m writing about new albums from Hello Whirled, Refrigerator, and Sunny Jain, and also one of the handful of new This Is Lorelei releases. I’ll be back with more next week, and in the meantime you can check out older editions of Pressing Concerns for more new music.
Hello Whirled – No Victories
Release date: May 14th Record label: Sherilyn Fender Genre: Lo-fi power pop Formats: Digital Pull track: I’ll Hold the Mirror
Hello Whirled, the project of Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey’s Ben Spizuco, has released 100 albums and EPs over the last half-decade, all of which can be found on the act’s monster of a Bandcamp page. The 99th Hello Whirled album, a 64-song Robert Pollard cover album called Down on Sex and Romance, put Spizuco on my radar, and Pollard’s influence is unavoidable when considering No Victories, Spizuco’s centennial release under the name. Even without the recorded tribute as evidence, Guided by Voices are a clear influence on Hello Whirled—the similarities abound, from the project’s collage cover art to its prolific output pace and hooky lo-fi rock stylings. On the band’s latest, the GBV sonic influence is most obvious on “Mrs. Matter”, whose wordplay title, stop-and-start music, and that descending-root-note-chord-thing Pollard does make it a dead-ringer for a later-era Guided by Voices song. The horrifying distorted-voice spoken word piece “Heroes Are the Best Villains”, meanwhile, is a reminder that Spizuco just as frequently reached for a nightmare-prog Circus Devils song as he did a more well-known Pollard song on Down on Sex and Romance.
It’s not all GBV pastiche, however—other than those two obvious examples, the influence is more implicit. Spizuco falls especially far from that tree on No Victories’ quieter numbers, like the ambient synths of “Chariot”, which sounds like a deconstructed Cleaners from Venus song. When Spizuco really pushes both the music and his vocals, it reminds me of a few different underground 90s indie rock bands, specifically Nothing Painted Blue and DiskothiQ. Hello Whirled sound the most like Nothing Painted Blue frontman Franklin Bruno on “Money Is the Death of Art”, a cheerfully nihilistic song touching on such lighthearted matters as imminent climate catastrophe and, of course, the dead-end future of art and those who value it—for example, Ben Spizuco. “Money Is the Death of Art” ends with its singer lying bleeding on the pavement, suffering dramatically for his creative vision. I should mention that No Victories is a dark album, populated with violence, bodies, and spilled blood. The opening title track is an even-more apocalyptic “Baba O’Reilly”, with Spizuco declaring “Here’s your second coming / as blood fills up the skies” over a swirling synth, and we get “There’s a flag hanging over our bodies / Bodies hanging over our land” just a few songs later in “The Way It Is”.
I get the sense that Hello Whirled is just kind of like this, with Spizuco either refusing or being unable to dial down his grandiosity even when singing about smaller topics, like how he doesn’t want to dance and please don’t ask him to dance in “Please Stop Dancing” (“I wish not to be expected / To perform this ritual / Tradition be damned with all due respect”). No Victories was apparently recorded as Spizuco’s college senior thesis project, and it makes sense that it was made by somebody young enough to really feel things (as well as to, you know, have the will to make 100 records about it). With No Victories, Hello Whirled has put forth an album brimming with ideas and strong songwriting, and if we’re here already, I look forward to seeing where Spizuco’s music ends up over its next hundred albums. (Bandcamp link)
Refrigerator – So Long to Farewell
Release date: May 14th Record label: Shrimper Genre: Lo-fi indie rock Formats: Vinyl Pull track: Broken Glass Shore
There’s nothing Rosy Overdrive appreciates more than a long-running, consistently strong indie rock band, so I am happy to report that Refrigerator is back with a new record that excels at everything one would hope to hear in a Refrigerator album. So Long to Farewell is the twelfth LP from the Inland Empire-based band, and it appears that the Fridge have softened their recent physical-only approach by premiering the whole thing via Magnet Magazine and even putting it up on streaming services. While I don’t know if they’ve done this because they viewed So Long to Farewell as a worthy introduction to Refrigerator’s brand of lo-fi rock, it functions as such all the same. Right out of the gate, Refrigerator greet us with the warmly familiar album opener “Broken Glass Shore”, which exemplifies the slow-moving, deliberate and delicate atmospheric pop rock at which Refrigerator excels. “Drink Ourselves to Death” follows immediately afterward, which finds the band trafficking in the shambolic, guitar-distorted, classic-rock-in-the-basement feel of the other side of Refrigerator. It doesn’t lapse into pure chaos like an early-career Refrigerator song might’ve, though, sounding as if lead singer Allen Callaci and the rest of the band haven’t drunk themselves to death just yet, and are instead confidently and gleefully plotting it out in advance.
Most of So Long to Farewell probes the ground between these two poles. “Tulsa” and “Greyhound Sundown” are clear-eyed acoustic numbers, and the band grow even more sparse with “All the People I Lied to Are Dead Now” and “From Eternity to 4am”, both of which featuring haunting Callaci vocals over what are effectively ambient-drone instrumentals. “David Jove the Acid King” and “Jealousy Is Gone” feature the push-and-pull between pop songwriting and rowdy electric guitar, and the rocking “Corvette Winter” surprisingly kicks up dust in the middle of the album. After frequently collaborating and playing with each other for years, it’s not surprising to recognize traces of other bands from the Shrimper Records/Inland Empire scene in So Long to Farewell—the “song about a song” of “Part Time Lover Part II” feels like something written and performed by Simon Joyner, and I’d tag “I Could Be Anything” (which is mostly about being a bear) for a Wckr Spgt song if I didn’t know better. Indeed, Wckr Spgt’s Mark Givens joined the rest of the band as a second guitarist for So Long to Farewell (previously Allen’s brother Dennis was the only one), which adds yet another dimension to their sound in their third decade of existence—not that they needed one. (Grapefruit Records link)
This Is Lorelei – Love Is Everywhere
Release date: May 13th Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk pop, lo-fi rock, pop punk Formats: Digital Pull track: My Friend 2
In the time since I last wrote about a This Is Lorelei release (the Bad Forever EP), the Nate Amos project has continued its steady drip of singles and one-off songs, but Love Is Everywhere is a solid, sturdy collection of four breezy pop songs that all seem right together. Also, Palberta is back again—Lily Konigsberg and Anina Ivry-Block from the trio had guested frequently on Bad Forever, and both of them plus third member Nina Ryser all show up on the Love Is Everywhere EP to continue Berta’s hostile takeover of This Is Lorelei. Their roles in these songs are even more foregrounded this time —EP opener “My Friend 2” is the only one of the four where Amos sings lead on his own, although he also helms part of “She Dress Unreal”.
The songs on Love Is Everywhere are just as immediately catchy as the ones on Bad Forever, but whereas the revved-up pop punk on the latter found Amos at his most pessimistic and self-critical, this EP is an overall lighter affair. The most obvious example of This Is Lorelei’s change in hue would be that Love Is Everywhere starts with two different songs called “My Friend”, compared to Bad Forever’s opening track, “Not My Friend”, and the content of the songs only confirm it. “My Friend 2” is an acoustic pop ode to what its title suggests, and while the other songs are closer sonically to Bad Forever, they come off as positive mirror images to that EP’s trashy-pop rock, particularly the infectious auto-tune closing track “She Dress Unreal”. The This Is Lorelei of Love Is Everywhere is still one of big emotional ups and downs—“My friend, feels like I’m walking on eggshells with you” is the refrain of “My Friend 1”, and “It’s a Hack” finds Ryser asking “And if I’m lovesick always / Oh god, like, what am I supposed to with that?”—but for these four songs, Amos and Palberta explore the feeling of being at the peak. (Bandcamp link)
Sunny Jain – Phoenix Rise
Release date: May 21th Record label: Sinj Genre: Bhangra, jazz, psychedelia Formats: Digital Pull track: I’ll Make It Up to You
The latest “solo” album from Sunny Jain—dhol player, drummer, and frontman of the New York bhangra band Red Baraat—is actually a collaborative effort, featuring contributions from over fifty musicians and vocalists brought together virtually during COVID-19 quarantine to flesh out ten songs initiated and arranged by Jain. Most of these songs began as percussive pieces by Jain and, while his playing is prominent for the majority of Phoenix Rise, it shares the spotlight with an incredibly wide range of instrumentation that helps steer the album through several genre shifts. The beautiful “Where Is Home” features mbira from John Falsetto and violin from Raaginder, the latter of which also accents the bass-driven next song, “Say It”. “Wild Wild East (Recharge)” (a reimagined version of the title track from Jain’s last solo release) is led by busy saxophone from Lauren Sevian and the wordless vocals of Grey McMurray. “I’ll Make It Up to You”, meanwhile, is a straight-up rock song, with trombone and a blistering guitar solo from Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada punching up vocalist Kushal Gaya’s lyrics about American gun violence. While many of the other songs don’t have lyrics as straightforward as “I’ll Make It Up to You”, Jain and his collaborators use what is there to speak on and support shared issues and causes—the “it” in “Say It” is that black lives matter, and the instrumental “Pride in Rhythm” has been used as a fundraiser for Black Trans Femmes in the Arts.
Phoenix Rise is a recipe book (that can be purchased on Bandcamp) as well as an album. I’ve enjoyed musical artists integrating how quarantine increased their interest in cooking into their music in the past, and a collaborative collection of recipes makes perfect sense to go along with an album like this. While none of the songs on Phoenix Rise are explicitly about food, the similarities between it and this kind of music—as a necessity for life, as a force for community, as a place to share divergent backgrounds—are all over it. It would be easy for Phoenix Rise to be an overstuffed affair due to there being too many cooks in the kitchen, and while perhaps not every wrinkle on the album is an unqualified success, for the most part it comes off as a group of people building something that’s more than the sum of its considerable parts.
All proceeds from Phoenix Rise will be donated to the Center for Constitutional Rights. (Bandcamp link)
Today in Pressing Concerns, we’re looking at new albums from Fred Thomas’ Idle Ray, Keen Dreams, and tvfordogs, as well as the new Cusp EP. Between this and the April playlist post that went up earlier this week, I’m pretty exhausted. Look for one or two smaller posts later this month, and some bigger fish in early June. In the meantime, you can read earlier editions of Pressing Concerns for more new music.
Idle Ray – Idle Ray
Release date: May 7th Record label: Life Like Tapes/Half-Broken Music Genre: 4-track indie rock, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Dreamed You Were a Dog
The last full-length record from Michigan’s Fred Thomas, 2018’s Aftering, was the third in a trio of (very good) albums released under his own name that constituted his musical output for the back half of the 2010s. Since then, the former Saturday Looks Good to Me frontman has been Idle Ray, quietly releasing a couple singles and a demo EP under the name since late 2019—quietly, that is, until Idle Ray’s self-titled debut album showed up out of nowhere (at least for me, maybe I’m out of the loop) last Friday. Even though some of those earlier Idle Ray demos show up in a more refined state on Idle Ray, the album feels like a cohesive piece, and its dozen songs stand up against anything else I’ve heard from Thomas. Even though Idle Ray comes under what’s ostensibly a band name, these songs were mostly recorded by Thomas alone on 4-track—the only other person credited on the album is his partner Emily Roll for her vocals on “Water Comes Through the Windows”, which would make Idle Ray more of a “solo” endeavor than the stacked-by-comparison Aftering. Perhaps because of this, Idle Ray is also a more straightforward sonic affair than the last couple Thomas solo albums—there’s no eight-to-nine minute spoken word pieces here, for instance.
What Idle Ray does have are great pop songs, and it begins delivering immediately on this front with the flagging synth-led, mid-tempo power pop of “Emphasis Locater” rolling right into “Dreamed You Were a Dog”. The latter is the platonic ideal of a Fred Thomas song—vaguely urgent-sounding, incredibly melodic, and smartly affecting lyrically, in this case by using the titular dog dream as a way to long for basic compassion and affection (“They’re never sure what’s happening / But everyone is so happy for you”). A few tracks later, the twin melodic guitar line and vocal of “Terms” nearly matches it in strength. The relatively-barebones structure doesn’t stop any of the previously-mentioned songs from rocking out, but elsewhere Idle Ray strips things down even further. The 90-second, entirely acoustic “Coastline” is the best song on the record’s entire second side, and the similarly sparse album closer “Last Show” brushes up against the current state of the world from the perspective of a touring musician by singing about just what its title suggests (“I can still remember, but it gets less vivid each time”).
IdleRay also explores what Thomas perceives as fractured and fading friendships, singing about feeling left behind by people who used to be genuinely interested in him in “Coat of Many Colors” (“Last year’s friends aren’t pretending they’re still listening”), worried about being forgotten in “Polaroid” (“I used to take pictures of people / So they’d remember I was there”) and feeling a disconnect between how people talk about and interact with him on “Friends (Standing in the Corner at Another Busted Function)”. It would be tempting to say that, like “Last Show”, these topics have been brought about by the last year’s prolonged isolation, and they probably are to some degree, but given some of Thomas’ other recent songs, the fixation here isn’t so much a new development but rather an exacerbation of it. It deserves reiteration that Thomas is working all of this out over some of the most effortlessly catchy pop music I’ve enjoyed this year—every song except maybe “Friends…” has an obvious and very effective hook. With Idle Ray, we’ve all been gifted the perfect soundtrack to what’s sure to be a weird, confusing, frustrating, but hopeful summer. (Bandcamp link)
Keen Dreams – The Second Body
Release date: May 14th Record label: Strange Daisy/Whatever’s Clever Genre: Dream pop, heartland rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Porchlight
The debut record from New Orleans trio Keen Dreams is a big, shiny pop album that doesn’t concern itself with sticking to the basics of what a “big shiny pop album” should be, but remains no less open and inviting for doing so. The Second Body begins both of its sides with formless, floating ambient tracks, and the “normal” songs often stretch into the six-to-seven minute bracket and are marked by lengthy instrumental passages featuring instrumentation well beyond that of the band’s trio of members (guitarist James Weber Jr., bassist Shana Applewhite, and drummer Eric Martinez). The songs bleed into one another, and the transition from one to the next might catch one off guard if not paying full attention. Despite refusing to hold the listener’s hand with friendlier structures, The Second Body is an undeniably catchy album with big choruses that burst through everything else going on in the music. When everything converges, Keen Dreams recalls the better moments of maximalist “heartland” rock like The War on Drugs, whereas everything in between these bursts of catharses is reminiscent of the likes of 1980s sophisti-pop, later-period Destroyer, and mid-period Talk Talk.
After the dreamy instrumental opener “Herons”, the first few songs on The Second Body offer up expansive but melodic walls of sound. The lengthy “Pasted” is a workout for the entire band, as well as guest saxophone player Jonah Parzen-Johnson. “Pinks & Reds” and “Big Gulps” both take this sound and run with it, but they don’t charge forward the entire time and take a few breaths that hint at The Second Body’s more eclectic second half. “Porchlight” introduces a synth line into the mix as well as what I’m pretty sure is Matt Lavelle’s bass clarinet, while “Unsubscribe” manages to condense The Second Body’s widescreen sound into three minutes and just might be the most straightforward pop song here. “Pressing Eyes” mirrors “Pasted” in length, but where the latter song was a virtually-nonstop rush, “Eyes” holds back a bit and makes something that’s still propulsive but (befitting of its lyrics) dreamier. Album closer “Immediate Tonight” also refines Keen Dreams’ sound for maximum effect, and ends the record with some more triumphant saxophone. While I did list some acts that could be mentioned in the same conversation as Keen Dreams earlier, one should note that none of those are fellow underground bands from mid-sized American cities that have only just put out their debut album. Merely shooting for something of this scale would be notable—Keen Dreams did not have to put together something that stands up against several records from festival-level “big indie” rock bands to impress, but that’s exactly where they end up with The Second Body. (Bandcamp link)
Cusp – Spill
Release date: May 7th Record label: Dadstache Genre: Fuzzy gnarly indie rock Formats: Digital, cassette Pull track: Spill
Spill, the debut release from Rochester, New York’s Cusp, is an impressive collection of songs from a new group that feels like anything but the product of inexperience. This might have something to do with the members’ background in other projects—half of Cusp comes from the shoegazers Full Body 2, and the other half from the post-hardcore band Rut, but even so, it sounds like all four members had been playing together long before this EP. Cusp is pure indie guitar hero rock that recalls both the Northwest and Northeast corners of the United States. From the former, it’s nineties groups like the obvious (Built to Spill), as well as plenty of bands who worked the heavier end of Kill Rock Stars and K Records, and for the latter, it’s the current crop of contemporaneous acts from New England and New York on newer labels like Exploding in Sound and Dadstache, Cusp’s current home.
Though Spill does lapse into noisy rock instrumentals, lead singer Jen Bender’s vocals are just as frequently pushed cleanly to the forefront of the mix, creating a sound that’s distinct from either of the members’ previous projects. The opening title track is their version of pop, getting a lot of mileage out of Bender’s repetitive vocals that press forward with and without the instrumental squall. The zippy guitar line running through “Not Certified”, as well as Bender’s vaguely pissed off lyrics (“It’s so fucking frustrating / Always needing somebody’s help”) make it the punchiest moment of Spill. The clearest example of Cusp’s duality is in the swirling “Illusion Controlling”, which is the closest Cusp get to math rock, and “Resume” is the EP’s slow-burner, featuring the quietest two minutes on the record before taking off in its final third. “Resume” also features some of Spill’s most interesting lyrics, and seeing where Bender goes from here as a lyric-writer as nearly as intriguing to me as the grasp Cusp already have on their music. (Bandcamp link)
tvfordogs – I Only Wanted to Make You Cry
Release date: May 14th Record label: Gare Du Nord Genre: Post-grunge, psych-pop-rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Heading for the Sea
My quest to write about every act on the 2003 After Hours: A Tribute to the Music of Lou Reed compilation continues—I covered The Crowd Scene a couple months ago; does anyone know what Brook Pridemore is up to now? Anyway, today we have the long-running London trio tvfordogs, who released their first album, Heavy Denver, back in 2002, and are now on their fifth LP with I Only Wanted to Make You Cry. Sonically, the band sounds somewhere between classic British psychedelic pop-rock and slick, American nineties alt-rock. They unapologetically cite Stone Temple Pilots as a touchstone for I Only Wanted to Make You Cry, and it certainly does sound like someone in tvfordogs has had Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, the Pilots’ own flirtation with psychedelia, in their frequent rotation (this is a good thing). I can pick up on this influence most readily in the straight-ahead rockers from I Only Wanted to Make You Cry, like the classic-rock red herring opener “I’m a Liar” or the glam-flavored “Lead Boots”.
I Only Wanted to Make You Cry really shines in its quieter moments, however—these are where they probe the other major touchstones for this record, the psych-pop music nerdery of XTC and Todd Rundgren. The mesmerizing “Heading for the Sea” in the center of the album sounds like a Skylarking song reimagined as a heavier, shoegaze-influenced track and proves that tvfordogs are onto something with their particular blend of influences, while the gorgeous ballad “Flags” is an early highlight as well. The title of the album is about songwriting and the desire to pen something that is genuinely emotionally affecting, upon which “I Only Wanted to Make You Cry” the song reflects. While I can’t say that it reduced me to tears, I can tell that I Only Wanted to Make You Cry is an album purely derived by passion. It exists because tvfordogs and the people around them still believe in their music after two decades and want to create and release it, regardless of where it might fit in with trends and movements in the larger “music world”. Give me that over the alternative any day. (Bandcamp link)
At long last, the Rosy Overdrive “songs I enjoyed listening to in April 2021, not necessarily released in April 2021 but obviously there’s a lot of overlap” overview has gone live. Featuring: plenty of songs from albums/EPs that I’ve already written about on this blog, new music from upcoming releases I hope to cover further in the future, songs from new albums I probably won’t get around to discussing but wanted to highlight here, and a handful of older songs that I have exhumed for your benefit.
Eleventh Dream Day, Dazy, Dinosaur Jr., Emperor X, and Proper Nouns all get two songs this time around. Remember Sports get three songs—it’s a Remember Sports world, and we all must accept this. Check out older playlist posts if you’re liking what you see and hear.
“Since Grazed”, Eleventh Dream Day From Since Grazed (2021, Comedy Minus One)
The title and opening track of Eleventh Dream Day’s latest triumph, Since Grazed, is an early sign that the band has taken a different route this time around. The song doesn’t greet the listener with EDD’s typical Crazy Horse-esque electric theatrics, but rather the muted strumming of an acoustic guitar. Lead singer Rick Rizzo doesn’t even begin his vocals until over a minute into the track, and the song only starts to take shape when the first chorus arrives a minute later. “Since Grazed” then takes off with incredible vocal harmonies, echoing drums, and a triumphant lead vocal from Rizzo. It’s expansive, it’s dramatic, it’s both like nothing I’ve ever heard from Eleventh Dream Day and instantly one of their best songs ever. Read more about Since Grazed here.
“Greatness Waitress”, Fishboy From Waitsgiving (2021, Lauren)
“Greatness Waitress” is not the opening act to Fishboy’s detailed, intricate indie rock opera Waitsgiving—that would be “The First Waitsgiving (Waitsgiving Founder)”, which does its scene-setting deftly in its own right—but it’s the moment when Fishboy’s latest record lets us know what we’re all in for as listeners. “Greatness Waitress” doesn’t let all the recurring people and objects it sets up for the album’s narrative (the sisters, the cassette tape diary, the record store) get in the way of one steamroller of a pop song. It’s ironic that a concept album about Waitsgiving serves up something so immediate and catchy as this. Read more about Waitsgiving here.
“Pinky Ring”, Remember Sports From Like a Stone (2021, Father/Daughter)
I fucking love the new Remember Sports album, and I’m making up for not formally reviewing it by throwing a good quarter of Like a Stone on this playlist. “Pinky Ring” was released as a single, and I must’ve heard it on its own, but hearing it kick off Like a Stone really made it click for me. The band roars through the song with a bite that’s like a sharper cousin of the sloppy indie punk that put them on my (and most Remember Sports fans’) radar, slowing down their tempo but not their intensity. Bandleader Carmen Perry is fully equipped to take advantage of the space opened up around her vocals—“I wanna be the girl that talks, makes you fall down to your knees” is just the kind of attitude “Pinky Ring” needs.
“See the Bottom”, Dazy From The Crowded Mind (2021, Very Loud Sounds)
The opening track to Dazy’s The Crowded Mind EP is an instant gratifier, blasting the listener with warm fuzz and wasting no time getting to the monster hook in its chorus. The band is actually the solo project of Richmond’s James Goodson, who delivers his short, sweet, revved up power pop over a drum machine and distortion. “See the Bottom” is the work of the one-man, lo-fi pop punk hero we need, if not the one we deserve. Read more about The Crowded Mind here.
“I Met the Stones”, Dinosaur Jr. From Sweep It into Space (2021, Jagjaguwar)
I’m not the first one to point this out, but the new Dinosaur Jr. album sounds like they decided to make a whole record out of the hooky alt-rock singles from their “reunion” albums—nothing but “Almost Ready”s, “Over It”s, and “Tiny”s. It’s too early to proclaim Sweep It into Space their best since You’re Living All Over Me or Bug or Where You Been, but that they pulled something like this off is worth celebrating. Take album track “I Met the Stones”, which starts off with mid-tempo, chugging power chords as J. Mascis sings about, well, the time he met the Stones (“I got excited, I got depressed”, in case you’ve forgotten what a genius lyricist J. can be) before unexpectedly delivering a classic Mascis-Dinosaur Jr. chorus featuring perfectly-deployed backing vocals. The blistering guitar solos are…less unexpected, but no less welcome.
“The Tyranny of Either/Or”, Evan Greer From Spotify Is Surveillance (2021, Get Better/Don Giovanni)
Activist, author, and singer-songwriter Evan Greer is no stranger to rolling the issues for which she fights and her experiences with them into her recorded output, whether it’s not letting institutional terror and fear win in “Last iPhone” from 2019’s she/her/they/them, or the other songs on Spotify Is Surveillance which tackle everything from digital invasion of privacy to the banal cesspool of modern liberal bullshit. “The Tyranny of Either/Or”, an angry fuck-off anthem to TERFs and other transphobes, is perhaps the most powerful message on Greer’s newest album. “Why can’t you see our liberation’s intertwined?” Greer pleads to someone using their own gender as an excuse to attack others merely for existing. Greer then offers a rebuke to the tyranny alluded to in the song’s title: “We refuse to comply / With your pathological need to categorize”. “The Tyranny of Either/Or” is also an incredibly catchy song, with roaring power chords and Greer’s defiant vocals making sure the lyric packs as much of a punch as it possibly could.
“Time Cop”, Oblivz From Uplifts (2021)
While Oblivz’s Uplifts EP doesn’t have a single dud, the treadmill-synthpop of “Time Cop” and its puzzle-piece lyrics make it a gem among gems. I asked my partner what they thought the titular phrase was, and it made them think of the voice inside one’s head that criticizes every moment that isn’t being spent on “productivity”. I was thinking more along the lines of how social media can destroy the idea of time in any meaningful sense of the word (key line: “I can’t live my life on the Internet / Because I can’t feel alive on the Internet”), and it probably has something to do with the pandemic too. Either way, the chorus hook of “Time Cop” has been lodged in my brain since I’ve heard it, and Oblivz co-creators Charlie Wilmoth and Andrew Slater have put together a song that’s as strong as anything from their main band, Fox Japan. Read more about Uplifts here.
“Donkey Kong”, Noods From Blush (2021, Get Better)
So, one of the best songs of the year so far is called “Donkey Kong”. It’s not about Donkey Kong, per se, at least not any more than it’s about cable TV, futons, and heartless bastards. There’s such a glorious separation between the music and lyrics to “Donkey Kong”, the best song on Noods’ promising indie pop debut LP, Blush. Singer Trish Dieudonne guides the song through three minutes of ups and downs, seemingly describing the end of a relationship but through Dieudonne’s train-of-thought lyrics instead of a clear narrative. Confident, self-critical, momentarily at peace—Dieudonne has tried all the moods on by the time “Donkey Kong” is over. As much as the words to “Donkey Kong” deal with inner and outer turmoil, musically Noods have it all together on the track. “Donkey Kong” is a perfectly-constructed song—the melodic bass plodding that undergirds the whole thing, the triumphant synth that guides the song to its emotional peak, Nick Seip’s backing vocals, and of course Dieudonne’s excellent voice of her own. Noods are now very much on my radar, and I would encourage everyone else to keep an eye on them too.
“Marionette”, Ross Ingram From Sell the Tape Machine (2021, Hogar)
“Marionette” is part of a biting one-two punch in the middle of Ross Ingram’s otherwise slower-paced and contemplative (but still very good) Sell the Tape Machine, along with the nearly-as-good “Oh You’re So Silent Now”. Ingram thunders “I am no cause, I’m no effect / This too shall pass, right through us” for the majority of “Marionette”’s length, his strained vocals reminiscent of the earlier, angrier work of fellow producer-songwriter John Vanderslice. Whether Ingram is trying to convince someone of the ephemera of the song’s lyric or repeating it to himself like a mantra, the emotional ups and downs throughout “Marionette” capture the entire essence of Sell the Tape Machine in under three minutes. Read more about Sell the Tape Machine here.
“The Dirt”, Nervous Dater From Call in the Mess (2021, Counter Intuitive)
I like Nervous Dater. I’m not sure why it took me a couple months to get to Call in the Mess—2017 feels like so long ago, maybe I forgot how solid Don’t Be a Stranger was, but Call in the Mess is a great album that was worth the (self-imposed on my part) wait. Drummer Andrew Goetz takes the vocal lead on “The Dirt”, with usual vocalist Rachel Lightner taking a backseat. Lightner’s still featured prominently on the song, being somewhat of a co-lead singer on the verses and taking part in the shout-along chorus. “The Dirt”, even without said shout-along chorus, is an incredibly catchy song, featuring one of those classic power pop synth hooks as well as plenty from both Goetz’s and Lightner’s vocals. I love Goetz’s rough voice on the song, it reminds me of Adam Solomonian from Needles//Pins in the way it stubbornly remains melodic in spite of itself. The lyrics to “The Dirt” are emo gold in its telling off of a bad partner (“Loving something’s always gonna hurt”…”I regret all the time I wasted / All the time I spent on you”) and complete the package.
“Sad React”, Emperor X (2020, Dreams of Field Recordings)
It’s hard to write a song about the fucking internet. All the examples I can think of (which I will graciously not name here) feel like they have to do it with a nod and a wink, like they’re saying “Oh, the novelty! A song about social media, how silly!” even when they have a real point they want to make. Emperor X’s Chad Matheny does not need these kinds of training wheels. This is the person who wrote “Allahu Akbar”, after all—he’s been thinking about the digital flow of information and rhetoric in a geopolitical context long before the current-day liberal panic about social-media radicalization. “Sad React” works because it’s serious as a heart attack. The titular phrase is played terrifyingly and hopelessly straight, while Matheny rattles off lyrics that perfectly capture the unavoidable feeling of ineptitude and helplessness that comes with watching every tragedy in the world unfold in real-time and being unable to do anything of consequence about it (“Somebody just stole my laundry: sad react / They threw our friends in a labor camp: sad react”) over a traditionally-Emperor X mix of acoustic guitar and electronic touches for a backing track. This song about the limits and consequences of “awareness” (as opposed to actual power) as a political solution are incredibly powerful after over a year of quarantine—surprisingly, the song actually pre-dates the pandemic by a month or two, but Emperor X also have some very good lockdown recordings that are worth checking out.
“Y2k”, Proper Nouns From Feel Free (2021)
I went on about the similarities between Game Theory’s Scott Miller and Proper Nouns’ Spencer Compton last time I touched Compton’s music, and it still stands, but this time I’ll bring up a new point of comparison: Ted Leo, with or without his Pharmacists. I know I’m not the first to bring up Leo while discussing Proper Nouns’ latest album, Feel Free, but go on, listen to “Y2k” and tell me you don’t hear the similarities. The Nouns even throw in a reverby-dub outro at the end of the song, just like Leo’s band were wont to do! (It also begs the question—Is Ted Leo just agitprop Scott Miller? But I digress). There’s clearly a lot going on in the lyrics to “Y2k” that I can’t quite parse but that hasn’t stopped a few of its memorable lines from lodging themselves into my head (For example: “Narrative, no big deal, re-sidled bore (??) / Side-by-side, left to right, that mirror we look for (??)” and “Taste is gone, vision’s cut, life smells like past / Now I see nostalgia for a rung (?) I couldn’t grasp”).
“Faustina”, John R. Miller From Depreciated (2021, Rounder)
The latest single from West Virginia’s John R. Miller is a rambling folk-country ode to both physical and internal restlessness. Nearly every line in “Faustina” is revealing, whether Miller’s singing about substance abuse, his inner fears, or his attempts to escape them. “[I’m] running from the deafening sound / Of a future with no one around”, he admits, accompanied by Russ Pahl’s the gorgeous pedal steel guitar—the way the instrument swells while Miller confesses “I’ve had friends, and I’ve let my friends down” couldn’t be any more lonesome. Miller’s wandering finds him name-checking both Vestal’s Gap (in northern Virginia, not too far from Miller’s hometown of Hedgesville) and the titular saint of divine mercy.
“Sentimentality”, Remember Sports From Like a Stone (2021, Father/Daughter)
“Sentimentality” just gets better every time I hear it. This album track doesn’t quite immediately grab you the way the previously-discussed “Pinky Ring” does, but it’s perhaps an even better example of how Remember Sports has grown from scrappy college rock band to the absolute beast of a group that laid down Like a Stone. It’s a mid-tempo number that lulls you into false security by flirting with reverb-y jangle rock, only to knock you out in the chorus. Carmen Perry’s vocal turn is strong enough on its own to turn pacing-back-and-forth lyrics about relationship angst (as cover for personal angst, I think) into an unlikely anthem, but the rest of the band sees no reason why they can’t go as hard as Perry and play the shit out of the song right below the surface in a way a lesser band couldn’t pull off.
“Margaret Middle School”, Guided by Voices From Earth Man Blues (2021, GBV Inc.)
While Guided by Voices’ 33rd album, Earth Man Blues, is ostensibly a linear rock opera, the pieces of evidence in favor of this—the many illusions to schooling and youth and the band sounding a lot like The Who—usually show up on “normal” Guided by Voices albums, too, so it’s hard to know what to make of this aspect of the record. Still, if going into Quadrophenia mode is what gets Robert Pollard to deliver songs like the 70-second sugar rush of “Margaret Middle School”, then I say: long live John H. Morrison Musical Productions! Read more about Earth Man Blues here.
The last time we heard from Richmond, Virginia’s Gold Connections on Rosy Overdrive, the Will Marsh project had just released the Ammunition EP, led by the shiny power pop single “Stick Figures”. Marsh’s latest, a one-off, represents more than a small left turn for those expecting more of the same. “Confession” features copious amounts of guitar reverb, atmospheric synths, a drum machine-led build-up, and low spoke-sung vocals from Marsh. The Gold Connections pivot to darkwave/post-punk has officially taken off. I don’t know whether this is a harbinger of future Gold Connections material to come or a stray exploration of Marsh’s other influences (Marsh explicitly cites Nick Cave, but I also hear more dancefloor-friendly acts like New Order). It’s not an entirely different world than previous Gold Connections releases, however—Marsh’s distinct vocal delivery and lo-fi guitar lines link the song to the band’s past, and both help guide “Confession” to a successful midpoint between their lo-fi indie rock and synthpop.
“Definite Darkness”, Cymbals Eat Guitars From Lenses Alien (2011, Barsuk)
I wrote about Cymbals Eat Guitars with Zach Zollo over at Osmosis Tones earlier this month, so if you want to hear more about my thoughts on this band I’d advise you hop over there (and enjoy plenty of other quality music writing from Zach and maybe even me too). My research led me back through the Guitars’ discography and I found myself particularly enjoying Lenses Alien, which is not their best album per se but it might be the most Cymbals Eat Guitars of all the Cymbals Eat Guitars albums. And “Definite Darkness” might be the most Cymbals Eat Guitars song ever, a mid-tempo number that allows John Agnello’s lyrics to truly shine. He gifts us “There are people who put dirty hypodermic needles / Beneath the seat cushions in the movie theaters” and “I’ve been hearing the soft step of the gray-eyed governess” in the same song, the latter coming in the midst of a musical break for maximum impact.
“Don’t Be Fooled”, Heavenly From Heavenly Vs. Satan (1991, Sarah)
I’m not sure why I never really got around to Heavenly until now—turns out they’re pretty good! The twee pop royalty group is of the Refined British Twee variety rather than the Sloppy American Twee, and while I don’t necessarily prefer the former over the latter, it works in the case of “Don’t Be Fooled”, where the clean guitar parts and bouncy bass work just as hard in service of getting the song lodged in your head as singer Amelia Fletcher’s airy vocals do. The lyrics to “Don’t Be Fooled” are as simple as they are inscrutable, with Fletcher imparting “When the one you love’s not the one that you’ve been dreaming of / Don’t be fooled by dreams” in the chorus—which, sure, but I’m not sure how this relates to the somewhat troubling verses.
“Hide Another Round”, Dinosaur Jr. From Sweep It into Space (2021, Jagjaguwar)
Let’s not get complacent. I know J. Mascis gives off the impression that he could churn out something like “Hide Another Round” in his sleep, and while it does sound a little like “Tiny” from Dinosaur Jr.’s last album at times, “Hide Another Round” is the kind of Dinosaur Jr. song that makes the world a better place by merely existing for us to hear. Mascis leans pretty heavily on drummer Murph for this song, who pounds the immortal chorus hook into one’s head while J. remains the master of infusing his vocals with subtle inflection and emotion, giving just enough to make “Hide Another Round” stick. Like I said when I talked about “I Met the Stones” earlier, Sweep It into Space is fully stocked with hits like this—narrowing it down to just two songs for the playlist was difficult. Dinosaur Jr. remains firing on all cylinders long after most reunited bands would’ve run out of goodwill, so here’s to them.
“Bloomsday”, Samantha Crain From I Guess We Live Here Now (2021, Real Kind)
The opening track from Samantha Crain’s latest EP, I Guess We Live Here Now, is a charming bit of folk-pop-rock and also doubles as the most uplifting song I’ve heard from Crain yet. The Oklahoma songwriter’s new record has been characterized as a positive epilogue to last year’s A Small Death, and “Bloomsday” (whose title is a reference to the day from Joyce’s Ulysses) certainly rises to the occasion. Crain interpolates “This Little Light of Mine”, of all things, to complement lyrics about agency and taking back control of one’s life (even if you are just, as Crain says, “making due with wax and pride”) accompanied by lilting country guitar and piano.
“Now”, Nomeansno From 0 + 2 = 1 (1991, Alternative Tentacles)
Supposedly Nomeansno are going to have their discography reissued by Alternative Tentacles soon, and while I considered holding this song back until that happens, I decided to just highlight it “now” because there’s no date attached at the moment and these kinds of dealings (which, from what I understand, have been brought forth due to malpractice on the part of Nomeansno’s previous label) can end up in purgatory for God-knows-how-long. While “Now” isn’t on Nomeansno’s best-known album (that would be 1989’s Wrong), it’s perhaps their signature song. Lyrically, “Now” is some sort of manifesto, its punk poetry verses giving way to the battle cry (“Let’s get started: now”) at its heart, and musically it showcases Nomeansno’s heavier-and-more-technical Minutemen sound that is a key puzzle piece in the shape of punk to come. Hopefully Alternative Tentacles is able to make Nomeansno’s music accessible again in the near future.
“Stupid Thing”, Swim Camp From Stupid Thing / First Day Back (2021, Know Hope)
The A-side to Philadelphia act Swim Camp’s latest single is a gorgeous piece of introspective pop rock. The creator of the project, Tom Morris, has a voice that reminds me of LVL UP/Trace Mountains’ Dave Benton, and “Stupid Thing” comes off as a more slowcore-influenced version of Benton’s nostalgic indie folk rock. It’s the kind of music that would get tagged as “bedroom pop” if it weren’t so immaculately produced, with violin performed by Molly Germer accenting Morris’ words. While “Stupid Thing” does reach back to childhood experiences at its outset, it doesn’t stay there, with Morris taking inspiration from his desire to collect “stupid things” as a kid to look inward as an adult (“Fixate on it / Dig it up now, let’s just make it whole”). “Stupid Thing” and its B-side, the musically heavier but similarly evocative “First Day Back”, have put Swim Camp firmly on the Rosy Overdrive radar.
“Laundry List”, Hit Like a Girl From Heart Racer (2021, Refresh)
The opening track to New Jersey emo-indie-rock band Hit Like a Girl’s third album, Heart Racer, starts off gently and acoustically and slowly builds into a full sound by the end of its four minutes. “Laundry List” is an affecting song about a long-distance relationship, with the titular list being comprised of everything frontperson Nicolle Maroulis wants to do with the subject of the song when they’re together in person again. Maroulis is deep in the throes of what I like to call “big feelings” throughout the song, which finds them wondering if they’re crazy for waiting all day to receive a text from a certain person (no, that’s something that just happens) and brainstorming the best time and delivery system in which to first say “I love you” to their partner (yeah, I dunno the answer to that one).
“Rumblestrip”, Mikey Erg From Mikey Erg (2021, Rad Girlfriend)
Pop punk ringer Mikey Erg’s latest self-titled album is 26 minutes of him excelling at what he does best, and the 90-second “Rumblestrip” is the most efficient hook delivery system on Mikey Erg. Erg has served us up a song that’s entirely just a chorus, all unnecessary fluff eliminated, aside from a brief but just-as-catchy guitar riff. “Rumblestrip” is ostensibly about being tired of touring, which makes me wonder if the “you” in the song is actually an “I”, but you can still pogo along either way. Erg also lays down a perfectly-executed cover of Green Day’s “Going to Pasalacqua” on the same record, and between that and Dazy’s lo-fi Billie Joe thing, I’m coming dangerously close to getting into that band again for the first time since high school. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.
“Thank You x3”, American Poetry Club From Do You Believe in Your Heart?! (2021, It Takes Time)
American Poetry Club makes maximalist, heart-on-sleeve indie rock for the fifth wave era. “Thank You x3” is actually one of the band’s simpler, more sparse numbers, but it works incredibly well as the opening track to their latest EP, Do You Believe in Your Heart?! the way it builds to that big cathartic, communal finish. The triumphant “Yeah we get sad, yeah we get lonely / Yeah we get scared, it might go slowly / But you should always call me” is earned after singer Jordan C. Weinstock (I think? Sorry, most everybody in this band has a “voice” credit) spends the majority of the song navigating an emotionally-fraught but ultimately rewarding situation in a friendship.
“Compressor Repair” (Live at a Farmhouse in Rural Massachusetts), Emperor X From Nineteen Live Recordings (2013)
I went down a minor Emperor X rabbit hole which led me to the Chad Matheny project’s live album, aptly tilted Nineteen Live Recordings, which I don’t believe had been widely available until Matheny co-founded the label Dreams of Field Recordings with Christian Holden of The Hotelier last year. Anyway, now we can all listen to it and appreciate it, especially the absolutely stunning version of “Compressor Repair” (originally from 2011’s Western Teleport) that opens the album. The song is classic Matheny, with lyrics that use the mundane machinery of a malfunctioning air conditioner in an emotional context that I probably wouldn’t have thought possible before hearing it. It’s one of the most pure love songs I’ve heard in awhile. When Matheny shifts from singing about BTUs and EnergyStar to the heart of “Compressor Repair” in the way only he can, the delicateness of the live performance only adds to its power. “I want you to be cool / I wanted you to be cool”—who wouldn’t try everything they could to meet a basic human need of someone they care about, even if it isn’t their skillset?
“Sick of Everything”, Gorgeous Bully From Sick of Everything (2021, GWR)
The A-side of the first single from the formerly-prolific Manchester bedroom pop act Gorgeous Bully in three years is a brief spurt of acoustic lo-fi fuzz that’s as jaunty musically as it is bleak lyrically. “I am bored, I’m confused, I have nothing left to lose / Sick and tired of this game, sick and tired of everything”, cheerily imparts Thomas Crang as a fast-strummed guitar and simple drumbeat barrel forward. Elsewhere, he ponders if he’s even still alive amongst his daily monotony. The foggy nihilist pop anthem we all deserve in 2021.
“Emma”, Proper Nouns From Feel Free (2021)
Another dangerously catchy pop rock track from Proper Nouns. Although I can’t say for sure who the Emma is in the title, the lyrical subject matter and the fact that I follow bandleader Spencer Compton on social media would suggest it’s Goldman (and that’s some nice wordplay in the song’s first couple lines if so), although I’m nowhere near smart enough to truly dissect how she relates to “Emma” the song, which I think is about academic leftism and its contradictions? Well, whatever it is, the part about the heart of the institution built on what one stands against is just a good pop hook, and I didn’t realize I needed Compton singing “Anarcho-capitalism / In your blood and on your dishes” in perfect falsetto until I heard it.
“Juno”, Spud Cannon From Good Kids Make Bad Apples (2021, Good Eye)
The first single from Spud Cannon’s upcoming album Good Kids Make Bad Apples is a formidable college rock party song. The Spuds’ rhythm section is firing on all cylinders with “Juno”, with an insistent bassline running under the whole thing and a quick and steady drumbeat that reminds me of basketball dribbling (although it was apparently recorded on Vassar College’s squash court). The biggest attention grabber in “Juno”, however, is lead singer Meg Matthews’ voice, which jukes and dives all around the song theatrically. In the verses she’s drawing out all kinds of lines for emphasis (“Gonna catch some eyes / Or at least I’ll tryyyy” or “Guess I’m not his type / Wonder what he liiiikes”) only to hop onto the song’s motor-mouth chorus just as easily (“Work! The! Crowd!”). The music of “Juno” captures pretty well the chaos of a college party while being guided deftly above the fray by Matthews, who rolls with every punch from a missed ride to spilled wine, all the while.
“Blind Faith”, Velvet Crush From In the Presence of Greatness (1991, Creation)
The troll in me wants to proclaim In the Presence of Greatness the best album released by Creation Records in 1991, and while I cannot go full Joker and claim that it’s better than Bandwagonesque, the two albums are a lot closer in quality than you nerds would like to admit. In some ways, Velvet Crush is the perfect 1991 British band, forging a middle ground between Teenage Fanclub’s wistful power pop and My Bloody Valentine’s wall of sound. That they were originally from Rhode Island is of no import to the matter, and I will not be discussing it any further. “Blind Faith” just might be my favorite song from the whole album—it may not be the most “in your face” number from …Greatness, but I don’t know how anyone could deny that chorus. Velvet Crush somehow hold off on busting it out until about halfway through the song, but once the cat’s out of the bag, the rest of “Blind Faith” is basically just them riding the hook off into the sunset.
“Weatherman Got It Wrong”, Dazy From Revolving Door (2021, Very Loud Sounds)
At around 90 seconds, “Weatherman Got It Wrong” is even shorter and sweeter than “See the Bottom” earlier on this playlist. This one’s from the three-song Revolving Door EP (single?) from the beginning of the year, but it feels of a piece with The Crowded Mind. It’s more…I’m not sure if “subtle” could ever be applied to this kind of hooky lo-fi pop, but it’s one of James Goodson’s more effortless-sounding numbers. Goodson lets his Billie Joe Armstrong flag fly with his lazily melodic delivery in the verses, and caps it all off with a positively groovy guitar solo. Read more about Revolving Door here.
“We Need a Bigger Dumpster”, Cheekface (2021, New Professor)
Good news, everyone: the somewhat regular occurrence of one-off Cheekface singles still appears to be on, even after the release of their sophomore record Emphatically No. in January, which collected a few of them as well as new material. Now a couple months later, we get “We Need a Bigger Dumpster”, which both continues vocalist Greg Katz’s somehow-incredibly-melodic talk-singing and functions as yet another Cheekface state of the nation whose conclusion about, you know, everything is: this is fine, actually. It’s cool. I could go on about “We Need a Bigger Dumpster”’s lyrics, but I would like to give a tip of the hat to the music, and how the band (Katz, bassist Amanda Tannen, and drummer Mark Echo Edwards) build up the chorus in a way that makes “We Need a Bigger Dumpster” sound, well, bigger and feels like a step forward for the trio.
“Like a Stone”, Remember Sports From Like a Stone (2021, Father/Daughter)
Now, here’s the Remember Sports song from Like a Stone that throws the band back to their breakneck, slop-pop punk days. Sort of. Sure, “Like a Stone” accomplishes a lot in two minutes and change, but what makes the song is how it goes about it. The title track builds up, slows down, and tosses off multiple movements, guitar explosions, and synths touches like a mini-opera. It reminds me of one of my favorite short songs, “Raging Bull” by Silkworm, the way it confidently packs all of this into its short length. And also, we all love to hear a Jack Washburn lead vocal, if only for a couple lines, and the way his and Carmen Perry’s voices link up right before the big finish is very Italian chef’s kiss emoji.
“Look Out Below”, Eleventh Dream Day From Since Grazed (2021, Comedy Minus One)
Tucked away at the bottom of Since Grazed’s Side Three, “Look Out Below” is both one of the largest departures from Eleventh Dream Day’s typical sound and sneakily one of the best songs on the entire album. A tender acoustic ballad, the song is enhanced by excellent backing vocals from drummer Janet Bean and what sounds like some studio wizardry from piano/synth player Mark Greenberg. I’m still not sure what the phrase “Michael came before me” in the second verse refers to exactly, but I can confirm that the line is not “my cocaine before me”, as I kept hearing initially. Read more about Since Grazed here.
“How Many Times”, That Hideous Sound From That Hideous Sound (2021, Repeating Cloud)
“How Many Times” leads off the debut, self-titled single from Portland, Maine’s That Hideous Sound, which is the solo project of Elijah Cressinger. The song kicks off with bass and a drum machine before launching into a lo-fi but still busy-sounding garage rocker. Cressinger pulls out all of the classic bedroom pop stops for “How Many Times”—the drum machine, of course, but also those synth accents, and plenty of self-harmonies and backing vocals. Like any worthwhile lo-fi pop-punk song, “How Many Times” is an earworm above all else—pretty much the whole song is the hook. Its title could be interpreted as “How many times can they sing that title line, and will it ever get tired?” It hasn’t yet, as for myself.
“Look the Other Way”, Sour Widows From Crossing Over (2021, Exploding in Sound)
The latest EP from the Bay Area’s Sour Widows is a solid collection of four casually beautiful indie rock songs that push the record past twenty minutes without overstaying their welcome. If “Look the Other Way” isn’t the best song on Crossing Over, it must be close, and it’s a good introduction to Sour Widows—I know this because it was the first song of theirs I heard, and it worked on me. The harmonies between co-lead-singers Susanna Thomson and Maia Sinaiko give the song an almost folk-rock feel, despite it being a fully electric guitar affair. “Look the Other Way” is too clear to be “dream pop” and too fast for “slowcore”, but evokes similar feelings to those genres, as well.
“Knock Out”, Xiu Xiu and Alice Bag From OH NO (2021, Polyvinyl)
Wow, I sure do enjoy putting quiet Xiu Xiu songs in the penultimate slot for these monthly playlists. If you’re looking for an OH NO take, I don’t really have one—I thought it was fine but it didn’t really grab my attention too much and I don’t know if I’ll go back to it. I liked “Knock Out”, though. Instead of Eugene Robinson, who guested the most recent time we talked about a Xiu Xiu song, here we get the equally-great but quite different Alice Bag duetting with Jamie Stewart. Bag steals the show with her final solo verse—“Killing a scorpion with an orthopedic tennis shoe against your hotel room tile” is the most immediately memorable line, but “A crude and inaccurate drawing of your feet and ankle and ankle brace” tops it.
“Love Song #2”, Upper Wilds From Venus (2021, Thrill Jockey)
Not only have Upper Wilds just announced the highly anticipated (by me) follow-up to 2018’s Mars, but they seem to be positioning it as a sequel of sorts to that record. They’ve stuck to a similar cover art motif, for one— oh, and also it’s called Venus. Bandleader Dan Friel and company (bassist Jason Binnick and drummer Jeff Ottenbacher, this time around) seem to be leaning in to the “named after the goddess of love” aspect of the planet, seeing as the track listing for Venus the album is Love Songs #1 through #10. The second Love Song is a classic Friel-led rocker—loud, fast, and incredibly catchy. It’s apparently about Friel’s cousin, a long haul trucker, and of being away from loved ones in, as he puts it, “plague times”. “This year turns to next year / Time ain’t on our side” bellows Friel in the middle of a song that makes four and a half minutes speed by in what seems like much less.
I’m capping off an incredibly busy week at Rosy Overdrive with four new records to discuss on this Bandcamp Friday. Here, I talk about new albums from Rosali and Mope City, Dan Wriggins‘ Utah Phillips cover EP, and the Ganser remix EP. Also out today (May 7th) are new albums from Jacober and Oblivion Orchestra, which I reviewed on Monday along with a couple others. I also wrote about the new Guided by Voices album on Wednesday–it was supposed to be part of this post, but, unsurprisingly, I went way too long on the subject at hand for it to fit here. Finally, part two of my collaborative post with Zach Zollo of Osmosis Tones is up today, and you can always check out Part I if you haven’t yet.
Rosali – No Medium
Release date: May 7th Record label: Spinster Genre: Folk rock, country rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Bones
No Medium, the third album from Philadelphia’s Rosali Middleman, is a folk rock record—in that it genuinely sounds like a rock band playing these songs, rather than a “roots” music group that just happens to utilize traditional rock instrumentation. Some of that can be attributed to Middleman’s backing band for No Medium, the Midwestern lo-fi garage rock David Nance Group. I’m a fan of David Nance’s albums with his own band, but I did have some trepidation that they might overwhelm Middleman’s songwriting. The record suffers from no such malaise, however—if anything, Middleman sounds sharper than ever. Of course, Middleman herself is no strange to the “rocking” music—check out her work with Long Hots, or even the guitar showcase midway through “I Wanna Know” from her 2018 solo album, Trouble Anyway, both of which help explain why the team-up makes more sense than it did to me at first blush. No Medium ends up a varied album, containing some of the most cathartic rock moments of Rosali’s solo career as well as stripped-down, mid-tempo breath-catchers.
Middleman and the band converge to make fireworks early on in No Medium with the back-to-back punch of “Bones” and “Pour Over Ice”. The former’s careening opening riff is an instant attention-grabber, and Middleman doesn’t let go while singing of extricating herself from an unpleasant relationship (“I’ll gather my bones and go back home / And be alone, be alone”). Middleman’s lead guitar in “Pour Over Ice” rivals the blast of “Bones” just one song later, propelling her lyrics grappling with substance abuse to that of a soaring anthem. “Whatever Love” isn’t as in-your-face as those two songs, but its smooth country-rock style is another full-band musical success, and Middleman’s poignant lyrics about resolving to be okay in spite of the swirling of emotions both within and around her is a theme that feels central to No Medium.
The slower moments on the record are just as impactful. The instrumentation on these songs is no less deft, and Middleman saves some of her best writing for them, such as in “Whisper”, which according to Middleman is about a psychic New York taxi driver she met on the way to a show, or her tale of grief on “Your Shadow”. “All This Lightning”, the album’s centerpiece, is a smoldering song about staring down the blossoming of an interpersonal relationship and taking joy in giving into wherever it goes without fear. While “Lightning” lands right in the heat of the moment, album closer “Tender Heart” comes across like its older, settled-down sibling. The former song’s radical honesty and openness that comes from rush of euphoria contrasts with that of the familiarity-birthed, long-term openness that “Tender Heart” has earned. “By and large, we’ve stormed this weather,” Middleman sings—she’s now conquered the lightning, and is able to look across everything with clarity and consider what comes next. Fascinatingly, “Tender Heart” actually predates “All This Lightning” by over a decade—it was written in 2006—but Middleman makes the right choice to finally give it a home on No Medium. It’s the perfect capstone for a record that grapples with some fairly universal themes in a confident and affirming way but, instead of giving into the shallow and cliché, works precisely because of how personally evocative Middleman makes these songs. (Bandcamp link)
Dan Wriggins – Still Is: Dan Wriggins Sings Utah Phillips
Release date: May 7th Record label: Orindal Genre: Folk, country Formats: Digital Pull track: I Think of You
Friendship’s Dan Wriggins is fresh off of his debut solo releases, the “Dent / The Diner” single and the Mr. Chill EP, and he’s back for a third time this year with a collection of covers from the songbook of folk singer and labor activist Utah Phillips. These five songs are (mostly) from the same recording sessions from the aforementioned EP and single, and have found a home as a digital-only Bandcamp release after Wriggins was unsure whether or not they’d ever be released. One doesn’t have to be familiar with Utah Phillips’ work to appreciate Still Is—that’s a testament both to Phillips’ original songs and how Wriggins performs them. Wriggins’ five selections reveal in Phillips a talented writer who could be bluntly, blisteringly political and just as affecting on the personal level.
“All Used Up”, which from what I understand seems to be one of Phillips’ signature songs, doesn’t sugarcoat the human effects of capitalist exploitation but remains defiant in its face, and it’s easy to see why it would resonate as a folk standard and how it helped earn Phillips his reputation. Wriggins adds updated lyrics to “This Land Is Not Our Land”, which itself is an update (but not a refutation!) of the Woody Guthrie song, and the drawn out punchline about investment bankers shows Wriggins gets the power of humor and of not being so deadly serious all the time in conveying these kinds of messages. The middle section of Still Is is made up of “I Think of You” and “Going Away”, a pair of more intimate songs that find Phillips ruminating on loneliness, love, and nature, among other topics. With slightly less references to trains, they could pass as Friendship or Wriggins solo songs, especially the heartbreaking “Going Away”, which was recorded by David Settle of The Fragiles on a porch in Philadelphia.
Still Is concludes with the nuclear dread of “Enola Gay”, a recording that I find genuinely difficult to listen to. Wriggins’ typically warm voice, the one that made him Mr. Chill, becomes transformed into a strained howl that grows more and more unhinged and troubled over cheerily-strummed cowboy chords. I don’t believe that I need to explain how such a performance is necessary to capture one of the most disturbing moments in all of human history, or how “Enola Gay” remains relevant in American politics in 2021, two things of which I’m sure Wriggins was cognizant when he chose this particular song. Indeed, Wriggins has said that the EP is called Still Is to emphasize that these songs are our present, not just the past. The pilot of the Enola Gay may sit in a far-off control room instead of in the cockpit, but he still is. However, the narrator of “All Used Up”, who uses what remains of his facilities to give back to those who deserve it, and the vow to organize in “This Land Is Not Your Land”—they still are, too.
All proceeds from this EP are being donated to the People’s Fridge in West Philadelphia. (Bandcamp link)
Ganser – Look at the Sun
Release date: May 6th Record label: Felte Genre: Post-punk, dance-punk, electronic Formats: Digital Pull track: Emergency Equipment and Exits (Bartees Strange Remix)
With all due respect, I cannot relate any less to the people who bemoan not being able to break out of the cycle of listening to the same three or four albums on repeat and never branching out musically. I have the opposite problem—I’m like a shark, always moving from new (to me) album to album, to the point where I know damn well I’m not giving everything I listen to the attention it probably merits. Starting Rosy Overdrive has helped with this, because now I’m always considering what, if anything, I want to say about a given album or EP or song and it helps me return to them. In November 2020, however—which is when my Notes App says I first listened to Ganser’s sophomore album, Just Look at the Sky—Rosy Overdrive was just a vague idea in my head, and I was just someone plowing through every album from The Hell Year that looked interesting and wanted to hear before the end of December (after which, I guess, I can’t listen to music from 2020 any more?).
Which brings us to Look at the Sun, an EP of remixes from JustLook at the Sky that not only is enjoyable in its own right but caused me to go back to last year’s Ganser record and appreciate that one more as well. These five revamped songs (constituting over half of Just Look at the Sky’s original track list) are helmed by an all-star cast of collaborators who interpret their tracks in fairly divergent fashion. Bartees Strange takes on “Emergency Equipment and Exits”, and he wisely keeps that song’s propulsive energy intact, kicking the song into an even higher gear. Meanwhile, Algiers’ take on “Told You So” converts the track to the dancefloor with surprising ease. Sadie Dupuis of Sad13 takes the opposite route from Bartees Strange in her remix of “Bad Form”. The original version was a slice of garage rock/post-punk that recalled Gang of Four and Wire and made for one of Just Look at the Sky’s more accessible moments, but in Look at the Sun, the song floats along, unmoored from its original musical grounding. I’d be disappointed if there wasn’t one remix here that’s absolutely bonkers, and thankfully Girl Band’s Adam Faulkner delivers by turning “Self Service” into a barrage of noise and percussion that renders the song’s vocals nearly inaudible. Perhaps I took the long way around with Ganser by getting into the original songs through their remixes, but it’s not like this was the “wrong” way to do it. Nothing wrong with Look at the Sun at all. (Bandcamp link)
Mope City – Within the Walls
Release date: April 30th Record label: Tenth Court Genre: Slowcore Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Don’t Understand the Shorthand
The third album from the Sydney, Australia-based Mope City is a record of subtly beautiful, electric slowcore. The band’s two vocalists, Matthew Neville and Amaya Lang, frequently trade off between each other or harmonize together in a way that reminds me of Carissa’s Wierd, and both of them can trot out a flat vocal inflection that sounds at times like a less angry Unwound, without any of the screaming parts. This particular comparison is at its most prevalent in the nervy, thorny “Covered in Might”, but elsewhere, such as in early highlight “Don’t Understand the Shorthand”, Mope City opt for shimmering bursts of melody. That song’s tale of communication woes over languid guitar is vintage slowcore melancholy.
Within the Walls, somewhat surprisingly, seems to make an effort to not trade entirely in the homogenous sound of their chosen genre, throwing the claustrophobic, acoustic “Trapped as a Child” and the late-night, bass-driven jazz of “A Mannequin Head Smiled (A Mannequin Head Smile)” in the middle of the album, not to mention the minimalist album closer of “When X Means Y”. Still, Mope City always return to their (ahem) core sound, with songs like “Umbilichord” and “Figure in My Peripheral” populating the album’s second half with the kind of crescendoing, post-rock-evoking slowcore a la Bedhead. I love a lot of this kind of music, but bands that plant themselves firmly in the middle of it are playing a dangerous game—it’s just as easy to lapse into something generic and forgettable as it is to craft a surface-level imitation of the genre’s greats. Within the Walls threads this needle and creates a memorable collection of songs in the process. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: April 30th Record label: GBV, Inc. Genre: Power pop, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: How Can a Plumb Be Perfected?
When Guided by Voices announced a new album made up of “rejected songs” at the beginning of this year, I thought it was destined to go down as a minor release in their heady catalog, with that description handing an indie rock world drowning in Robert Pollard-led records an excuse to let one slip by and take a breath. For whatever reason, however, Earth Man Blues has been a relative hit, earning the “best album in decades” moniker from Rolling Stone and even inspiring Pitchfork to begrudgingly give it a 6.8 just like we’re all back in 2012. As someone who had two Guided by Voices records on my 2020 year-end list and would’ve put the third one on there had it not come out in mid-December, I was happy for them to be getting the press, albeit with a healthy degree of skepticism regarding the fanfare. Is Earth Man Blues truly the best of the band’s “new lineup” (which has put out ten albums in the half-decade since its formation) or is the music world just playing catch-up to Pollard and company’s breakneck pace, trying to make up for not properly appreciating the charms of the likes of Surrender Your Poppy Field and Styles We Paid For? Well, I don’t know, but I’d rather talk about the music itself than the reaction to it, so…
Pollard has presented Earth Man Blues as a cohesive rock opera of sorts, which would seem to contradict the “collage of rejected songs” description, but given that Pollard values the narrative power of sequencing and has been known to re-write lyrics to older songs, it’s not impossible. I won’t pretend to say I’ve been able to pick a throughline—the pieces of evidence in favor of Earth Man Blues as rock opera are the many illusions to childhood and schooling (including the reference to Pollard’s childhood elementary school on the record’s cover) and that the band sounds a lot like The Who, but they aren’t overly convincing, because both of these happen on all the “normal” Guided by Voices albums, too. Still, there are moments like the back-to-back 70-second sugar rush of “Margaret Middle School” and one of the band’s best ever Tommy moments in “I Bet Hippy” where Pollard is clearly reaching for an overarching story, and it works as a catalyst for an exciting run of songs if nothing else.
The album has a looseness to it that reminds me of my favorite of the recent Guided by Voices albums, August by Cake, but while that record’s grab-bag quality was a matter of circumstance (the transitioning of GBV from a Pollard solo endeavor to a full-band affair once again, plus the other members contributing songwriting), Earth Man Blues earns its dexterity by being the product of a band that’s only grown more comfortable and in tune with each other. They don’t need to stretch every Pollard idea into a three-minute plodder—opener “Made Man” and the aforementioned “Margaret Middle School” make their points and sink their hooks in quickly and effectively. This isn’t a short song “gimmick” album like Warp and Woof, however—the nearly six-minute “Lights Out in Memphis (Egypt)” stops and starts through one of the band’s longest runtimes ever, and feels like another step forward for the group.
Hidden near the end of Earth Man Blues, the half-demo quality of the chill-inducing “How Can a Plumb Be Perfected?”, captures the magic of spare poetic Pollard like “Learning to Hunt” and “Kiss Only the Important Ones” have in the past, but it’s updated musically with tasteful flourishes from the band. Similarly digging through Pollard’s past is “Sunshine Girl Hello”, which starts with a cut-and-pasted intro that sounds like someone scanning through stations on Alien Lanes, but the strutting power pop gem hidden between the bouts of electromagnetic interference sounds ripped not from that era of Guided by Voices but from Pollard’s late 2000s band, Boston Spaceships. One mark of this lineup’s records has been left-field album closers, and Earth Man Blues doesn’t disappoint with “Child’s Play”. The song starts off as a fairly mid-tempo Isolation Drills GBV-era rocker before guitarist Doug Gillard wrests control of the song’s entire second half to lay down a blistering solo, its prominence a rarity despite the band’s classic and hard rock influences.
In the time between me starting this review and finishing it, Guided by Voices announced the debut LP of their side project with the same lineup, Cub Scout Bowling Pins, which debuted in January with the great Heaven Beats Iowa EP. I know people who swear that Heaven Beats Iowa, with its lo-fi bubblegum pop charms, is Pollard’s Best Work in Decades, and when the full record comes out I’m sure it’ll spur the same kind of hyperbole. Just like how Earth Man Blues is Rolling Stone’s Best Pollard Album in Decades, and how August by Cake is my personal Best Pollard Album in Decades. I don’t begrudge the music press or fans of the band for talking about Guided by Voices this way—after making over thirty albums just with his main band and over a hundred in total, how do you compare Robert Pollard’s records to anything but the entire universe of music in which it resides? That these later-career records keep inspiring such language, however, suggests larger forces at work here than a band occasionally hitting the highs of its “heyday”. And while it’s fun to play the “what if this was the debut from a new buzz-band instead of the third Guided by Voices album in the past 12 months” game, it doesn’t work because nobody else could’ve made Earth Man Blues. It’s another Guided by Voices album, and a pretty damn good one too. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to a special early-in-the-week edition of Pressing Concerns! Since we last spoke, a piece that I contributed to went up on the great Osmosis Tones blog. Zach Zollo (Mr. Tones himself) and I discuss a few bands we both think deserve more attention—in this issue, we discussed The Cleaners from Venus, Pere Ubu, Brainiac, and The Flaming Lips. I think there’s a lot of insightful commentary on these bands in the article (mostly from Zach but I do what I can) and if you enjoy Rosy Overdrive you should add it to your reading list. It’s a two-parter, and the second part goes up later this week.
Also going up later this week, assuming I have my shit together, is another Pressing Concerns. I have a lot of new music I want to talk about! Almost too much of it! And, hopefully, the next playlist post will go up sometime in the first half of May. In the meantime, peruse older Pressing Concerns posts for more new music.
Ross Ingram – Sell the Tape Machine
Release date: May 3rd Record label: Hogar Genre: Folk-tronica Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Marionette
Ross Ingram plays in the El Paso shoegaze band EEP and runs Brainville Recording Studio, where he frequently produces and engineers records for other bands. Sell the Tape Machine, partially recorded at Brainville, is Ingram’s debut solo full length, and it’s hard not to pick up on subtle sonic flourishes throughout the album and attribute it to his studio background. Even if he has more experience and notoriety as a producer, however, Sell the Tape Machine has a surprisingly songwriting-forward approach, with Ingram’s vocals and lyrics coming through crystal-clear at center stage. It’s clearly a deftly-crafted record, but Sell the Tape Machine treats this as a tool for the songs, rather than the entire point of the album. Early on in the record, “Home” is anchored by a strummed acoustic guitar and folk-rock instrumentation with with synth accents, whereas the synths and drum machines in the Postal Service-esque closer “Ashes” drive the entire song, but neither end of this spectrum feels incongruous with the other, because neither overwhelms Ingram. The most Ingram obscures himself on Sell the Tape Machine is on the hypnotic early highlight “Come Sunlight”, which glides along like something from Flotation Toy Warning and has a fogginess that services lyrics about the passage of time and how disorienting it can be these days.
Although a lot of the album is slower-paced and contemplative, Sell the Tape Machine musters up some bite with the one-two punch of “Oh You’re So Silent Now” and “Marionette” towards the middle of the LP. The panicked “Oh You’re So Silent Now” finds Ingram insisting “I’m still here” all the way to an unresolved conclusion, repeating it almost like a mantra. This frantic repetition continues with “Marionette”, with Ingram thundering “I am no cause, I’m no effect / This too shall pass, right through us” for the majority of the song’s length, his strained vocals reminiscent of the earlier, angrier work of fellow producer-songwriter John Vanderslice. Sell the Tape Machine cools off a bit after that with the dreamy “So Stay” and the sweet “I Like Having You Here”, both of which take the album back from the brink explored by its middle section. Ingram refuses to let the album float off quietly, however, by ending it with a peppy but morbid reckoning with death in “Ashes”.
Lyrically, Sell the Tape Machine is all over the place, as Ingram maps his own internal ups and downs. Sometimes, the highs and lows come in the same track, like in the internal fight song of “Marionette”. Sell the Tape Machine begins with a song (the title track) where Ingram considers giving up on making music, fantasizing about getting a boring office job or going back to school. Obviously, we know Ingram hasn’t sold his recording equipment, and in “Bookshelves”, near the end of the album, Ingram vows to continue to create music: “I’ll fill our home with warm sounds / Songs I’ll write for no one else”. But even then, he sounds far from as confident as his rising vocals would suggest (He follows this declaration with “And if you have your doubts, please don’t say it aloud”). Ingram opens “I Like Having You Here” by singing, “For the first time in years, I think I may have everything figured out”, and it feels so impactful because he spends so much of Sell the Tape Machine not having it figured out. People like to write about autobiographical music as “diary entries”, but of course, this isn’t entirely true. Some lyrics may start out that way, of course, but so much work happens between this point and the moment that you or I hear a finished product. What’s impressive about Sell the Tape Machine isn’t just that it’s “confessional” songwriting, but that Ingram builds something around this foundation that enhances these initiating emotions. He’s figured out how to convey not having it figured out. (Bandcamp link)
Jacober – Light Years
Release date: May 7th Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: marimba-space-lounge-pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Once I Was
Although I hadn’t heard of David Jacober before his latest album was announced, it turned out that I had heard his music before. He also has recorded with the likes of Dan Deacon, Future Islands, and Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, but my familiarity lies with his work as the drummer for the quite good Baltimore noise rock band Dope Body. On his own, however, Jacober makes songs that sound, well, light years from that band’s post-hardcore bent. Light Years (the album) is marked by Jacober’s marimba playing, which features prominently on every song. Although this instrument’s use in indie rock might conjure up formless, long post-rock passages a la Tortoise (or even some of Jacober’s earlier work), most of Light Years’ songs are concise and structured, despite the non-traditional choice of lead instrument. It’s not as large a leap as one might think: the marimbas here don’t exactly stand out starkly the way they did on, say, that one Moonface album, but rather they form part of a woozy, psychedelic wall of sonic sound that includes more traditionally “rock-band” parts, synths, and Jacober’s hypnotic vocals.
As its title hints at, Light Years finds Jacober preoccupied with the concept of time. On the propulsive title track, it sounds like Jacober is the one that’s traveling across distance and time, admitting, “We don’t wanna fear the future, but we can’t help feeling alarmed”. Later on, “Time” finds him at peace with this force he can’t control: “Time moves so fast and we’re so slow / But all the highlights find the daylight, always worth the while”. “Like Stone” features guitar from Infinity Knives that makes it perhaps the most “rock” song on the album, but it doesn’t pivot to rock music so much as swallow it up and add it to the sounds already found on Light Years. Album closer “One Thing” similarly finds new ways to expand Light Years’ musical reach, and in this case it’s trombone and saxophone (from Sarah Manley and Matthew Pierce) and prominent female vocals (from Allison Clendaniel) that join Jacober and his marimba. “One Thing” is a gorgeous love song that ends the album on a high note, celebrating grabbing these moments (and the people at the center of them) when they come and truly appreciating them. (Bandcamp link)
Oblivion Orchestra – Scene to Scene
Release date: May 7th Record label: Self-released Genre: Orchestral indie folk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: High/Low
Oblivion Orchestra is the solo project of New York’s Josh Allen. Allen plays every instrument on the project’s first album, Scene to Scene, which in this case means his voice, a guitar, and cello. Downer folk music from New York prominently featuring a cello would seem to invite Arthur Russell comparisons, and while I think fans of Russell’s music will find much to like in Scene to Scene, Allen’s cello playing is rarely as clear and sparse as Russell’s signature sound. The cello tracks on Scene to Scene have been meticulously layered upon each other (sometimes up to twenty layers, according to Allen), run through reverb, edited—tricks from Allen’s time as a film composer, apparently. While recognizable cello still features prominently on Scene to Scene, just as frequently the instruments pile up and the songs lapse into something else entirely: the Oblivion Orchestra.
This isn’t to say that all of Scene to Scene is a cacophony; just that Allen has a handle on when to dial the noise up or tone it down. “Lay You Down” is positively calming, with the cello forming a warm drone over which Allen convincingly sings the titular line over and over. The gorgeous opener “High / Low” is Allen’s strongest vocal turn as he floats over the orchestra, while on the other end of the spectrum is the sparse, haunting “Let You Down”, where Allen accompanies himself mainly just by knocking on the cello to turn it into a percussive instrument. Allen’s lyrics also seem to communicate with and acknowledge what’s going on beneath them. “In the middle of a sky blue / Yesterday’s clouds come rolling on through”, he sings in “Middle of the Night”, mirroring the ebb and flow of the cello tracks over Allen’s voice and guitar. The loosely-defined genre of “indie folk” in 2021 often uses traditional instrumentation as an excuse for dull songwriting and boring production, to the point where it’s tempting to reduce it to a creatively bankrupt brand of background muzak. Scene to Scene, which evokes the cinema soundtracks in which Allen is versed yet still grabs one’s full attention on its own, is a breath of fresh air. (Bandcamp link)
Birthday Ass – Head of the Household
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Ramp Local Genre: Post-punk, no wave, jazz-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Jello
Brooklyn/Boston’s Birthday Ass (yeah, I know) make wildly adventurous, jazz-rock music featuring a horn section and the equally wild vocals of bandleader Priya Carlberg. Their second album, Head of the Household, is a kinetic and chaotic affair that’s certainly informed by their New England Conservatory background, but both Carlberg’s vocals and the twists and turns of the band give the album a playful, and not infrequently pop-tuneful, vibe. Birthday Ass come off as a jazzier, bigger-band version of Editrix, another New England band with a music school background, or Squitch, who I seem to keep finding ways to bring up on Rosy Overdrive. “Blah” sets the tone for Head of the Household early on with music that starts, stops, and writhes around, as well as a spectacular motor-mouth vocal from Carlberg that evolves into a full-scale breakdown before the song runs its course. “Jello” holds itself together for the most part, the band playing melodically enough to turn the lyric “Oozing sugary glue, I can’t even conquer you” and Alex Quinn’s trumpet into hooks.
Carlberg’s interpretation of being “head of the household” seems to involve a lot of 1950s cuisine, which feature heavily in songs like “Jello” and “Broccoli Face”, among others. Key track “Spiced Twice” even mentions “cooking in the kitchen” and the seasoning to which the title alludes. While Birthday Ass’s twisted, skronky version of American nostalgia is in step with the ghosts of no wave bands past, this specific Cold War-era fixation reminds me of David Thomas’ brand of writing. Also Pere Ubu-esque are Carlberg’s vocal interjections—like how she wrings the maximum impact out of “blahs” in the opening track, or the almost-but-not-quite-nonsense of “Plubbage Blubbage”, or basically the entire second half of “Sunlit Toes”. All of these contributions work very much in tandem with the music; as much as they might sound “tossed off” or “random”, I’m sure a lot of work went into making these songs come off in such a way. There isn’t a dull moment on Head of the Household, and if you can learn to accept the Birthday Ass way of looking at the world, it can be quite rewarding. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns is back! Today I’m talking about new EPs by Olivia’s World, Dazy, and Expert Timing, the new old Ratboys album, and the latest from Squill. Not much in terms of housekeeping this time around, except to say that there may not be anything new on Rosy Overdrive next week, but several new posts are in development/planning. In the meantime, you can browse older editions of Pressing Concerns for more good music.
Olivia’s World – Tuff 2B Tender
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Lost Sound Tapes Genre: Twee pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Social Seagull (Ode to Friend)
Alice Rezende started Olivia’s World while living in the Pacific Northwest, recruited Rose Melberg (of Olympia’s Tiger Trap and The Softies, among other bands) to drum on the band’s first release, and has released everything under the name on Seattle’s DIY Lost Sound Tapes cassette label. Everything about the project screams “K Records-influenced twee pop”—right down to the childhood escapism of the band’s name and the amusing spelling choices in the title of their latest EP, Tuff 2B Tender. The second release by the now-Queensland-based band doesn’t just stick to the guileless indie pop that many modern twee-indebted acts hew to, however—Rezende’s songwriting seems to be bursting with big ideas, and Olivia’s World goes big musically to back them up. Now a four-piece, the band paints Tuff 2B Tender with a layered, full-band sound that evokes both the heavier end of 90s Seattle/Olympia indie rock and their stated influence of Exploding in Sound Records. That is, the EP’s five songs can do both “tuff” and “tender”.
Lead single and EP opener “Debutante” features a striking, classically twee vocal from Rezende, but the rest of the band clamors for the listener’s attention as well—by the three-minute mark, the song becomes a wall of sound, featuring cascading guitars from Tina Agic, ringing piano, a tight rhythm section, and full-on vocal harmonies. The band stomps through the majority of “Hell-Bent”, serving as a platform for Rezende’s stream of consciousness, half-sung, half-spoken lyrics. “What’s the point in being kind to a people that are never kind to you?” she asks, in what I assume is a swipe at those who weaponize “politeness” for personal gain—before she repurposes an entire verse of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” for the bridge. “Hell-Bent” also sports Tuff 2B Tender’s tightest chorus, with the titular line sounding ripped straight from mid-90s Kill Rock Stars. “Social Seagull (Ode to Friend)” is perhaps the sweetest (dare I say—tenderest) moment on the EP, a bouncy pop song about, well, what its title suggests. Tuff 2B Tender ends with the pastoral fantasy of “Grassland”, which, like the band’s name, seeks comfort and strength in discovering and inventing new worlds. “Grassland” contributes to a sense of restlessness from Olivia’s World, a band that has already made several sonic strides and planted flags on two continents over its brief length. Alice Rezende’s journey with Olivia’s World is already an enjoyable one for the listener to follow, and hopefully it is only getting started. (Bandcamp link)
Ratboys – Happy Birthday, Ratboy
Release date: April 1st Record label: Topshelf Genre: Post-country flavored indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Collected
While Happy Birthday, Ratboy was released as a surprise at the beginning of this month, the songs featured on the record should be familiar to fans of the now-Chicago-based band. The majority of the album is made up re-recorded versions of Ratboys’ earliest-written songs: its first five tracks originally came out on the first-ever Ratboys release, the Bandcamp-exclusive RATBOY EP—the tenth anniversary of which is the occasion for the birthday celebration. The Ratboys of the RATBOY EP were the duo of founding members and Notre Dame students Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan, and the original RATBOY was a scrappy home- and dorm-room-recorded collection of songs that prominently featured Steiner’s ukulele playing. Ten years, two additional members, and three albums later, these tracks have been quite transformed for Happy Birthday, Ratboy. Their translation of folk-rocking opener “The Stanza” to the full four-piece band feels natural and automatic (I’ve definitely seen Ratboys play it live before, which probably helped), while the lazy mood of “Intense Judgment” belies its stealthily complex arrangements. The feedback at the end of “at 39 is annie the oldest cat?” becomes a full-blown post-rock instrumental to end side one—and why not? It works.
The second half of the album, featuring songs written around the same time as RATBOY but which never even got the humble Bandcamp release of the first five, is even more exciting. The sub-two minute “Space Blows” (another one I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them play) is one of the best examples of the band at its full force. “Collected” qualifies as such, too—and it represents a sort of lyrical leveling-up moment for Steiner, who wrote the song for a “Gender and Rock n Roll” course in college. The record ends with one sole “new” song, “Go Outside”, and its breezy country-folk instrumental and sweet, simple lyrics underscore just how deeply weird these old Ratboys songs are. Happy Birthday, Ratboy features all sorts of musical left-turns and plenty of fascinating head-scratchers for lyrics. Whether it’s because these songs originated from a band still congealing as musicians, writers, and collaborators, or because the band playing these songs now is so different from the one that wrote them, or some combination of the two, it’s hard to think of an album that sounds exactly like Happy Birthday, Ratboy. It all amounts to one of the top-two best surprise-release albums featuring reimagined songs from earlier in a band or artist’s career this month. Happy birthday, Ratboys—here’s to ten more. (Bandcamp link)
Dazy – Revolving Door & The Crowded Mind
Release date: January 22nd/April 2nd Record label: Very Loud Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Weatherman Got It Wrong / See the Bottom
Dazy is the solo project of Richmond musician James Goodson (also of Teen Death and Bashful). Goodson’s been putting out one-off singles under the name since last year, but in 2021 Dazy seem to have higher ambitions. The three-song, six-minute Revolving Door EP turned up in January, and earlier this month Dazy released its fullest collection of songs yet—The Crowded Mind features eight entire tracks and crosses the 15-minute barrier. The Dazy of these EPs is pretty clearly a one-person operation: Goodson, accompanied by what sounds like a drum machine, lays down short, sweet, revved up power pop songs underneath a healthy amount of distortion. The nature of Dazy’s production and some surface-level sonic similarities might lead one to compare it to the likes of Wavves and other shitgaze/turn of the decade lo-fi pop rock acts. The fuzz never overwhelms the pop hooks, however, and Goodson does appear to be drawing from a wider net of influences with these songs.
In addition to playing in his handful of bands, Goodson also co-hosts a Green Day podcast. I do detect some Billie Joe Armstrong inflection in Dazy’s vocals, particularly in the music’s more measured moments—like the verses to “Revolving Door” and “Crowded Mind (Lemon Lime)”. He’s got that Armstrong-esque lazy-yet emotive style. I also read Jesus and Mary Chain comps when looking these Dazy EPs up, and I hear it, but it’s funny to me for the two big points of comparison to be one band who made their brand looking effortlessly cool to all, and another who have (although this is changing of late) long been unfashionable with the indie crowd. Guess it goes to show how arbitrary the marching of time makes everything! But I will say, tangentially to the JAMC thing, that there is a bit of a garage rock Madchester/Creation Records vibe going on with “Right as Rain”, helped in large part by that aforementioned drum machine. Along with the shotgun ballad “Don’t Leave Me on the Line”, it’s one of the stretch-out moments that The Crowded Mind’s (relatively!) expanded length affords it. These suggest that Dazy is more than just a one-trick pony, although I’m far from bored with the project’s main trick as of press time. (Bandcamp link 1) (Bandcamp link 2)
Expert Timing – Live in Stereo
Release date: April 2nd Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Pop punk, power pop Formats: Digital Pull track: Cement
As they await the chance to play in front of people again, Orlando’s Expert Timing have offered up a live-in-studio EP to helpfully remind us all what live music sounds like. Live in Stereo features four songs recorded at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s Shards Recording Studio in 2019, plus a bonus cover song. As far as stopgap releases go, Live in Stereo is a blast, with the live setting providing a nice showcase for the beefier end of Expert Timing’s self-described “bubble-grunge power pop”. Co-vocalists Jeff (also playing guitar) and Katrina (also playing bass) Snyder switch off so effortlessly you’d almost think they were married or something (turns out they are! Guess the same last name should’ve given that away). Jeff S.’s vocals remind me of another Jeff—Rosenstock, that is—particularly on his biggest showcase, the anxious “Cement”. Katrina and drummer Gibran Colbert’s rhythm section, meanwhile, propel these songs into something even more rock-solid. The band’s power trio setup combined with plenty of hooks reminds me of the poppier moments from Superchunk, and I also found myself thinking of Portland’s Heatmiser (most famous for being Elliott Smith’s pre-fame band) in the fuzzy, pissed-off hooks of “Cement” and the dark “Classic Case of Narcissism”.
Most of the songs are taken from Expert Timing’s sole full-length album, 2018’s Glare—these recordings predate their newest release, last year’s Whichever, Whenever EP, so nothing from that one turns up. The last live cut is the only one from their debut EP, Selective Hearing—but it’s no slouch, as “Sleep” is one of their finest moments as a band. The EP ends with the only song not taken from the Shards sessions: a faithful cover of The Format’s “Wait, Wait, Wait” that, along with Worriers’ version of “Rollercoaster” by Bleachers, will perhaps begin a micro-trend of indie-pop-punk bands covering songs by the members of fun.’s other groups (who would be a good candidate to take on Steel Train?). Although the original versions of these songs might sound a little “cleaner”, the energy of Live in Stereo makes it a good an introduction as any to Expert Timing. (Bandcamp link)
Squill – Moon Sessions (physical release)
Release date: April 30th Record label: Lost Sound Tapes Genre: Indie folk Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Little One
Moon Sessions was released digitally via Bandcamp and streaming services late last year, but came to my attention due to an upcoming cassette release through Lost Sound Tapes. Squill (not to be confused with the also-from-Boston Squitch) is the project of Lily Richeson, who was in the Massachusetts punk band Parasol for the first half of the 2010s, moved to Olympia, and now fronts the riot grrl-influenced pop punk band Bad Sleep. Squill, however, explores entirely different territory than either of those groups. Moon Sessions is primarily based around Richeson’s singing, accompanied by acoustic guitar picking or strumming. It’s ostensibly a folk album, and while some of Moon Sessions’ songs don’t feature much more instrumentation than that guitar and vocal setup, the record doesn’t restrict itself. “Her Decline”, for one, is a challenging album opener and the record’s heaviest moment, starting off quietly before thunderous percussion and distortion roar into the mix.
The appropriate Pacific Northwest reference point for when Moon Sessions reaches for the atmospheric might be the elemental folk-noise glow of The Microphones, but regardless of whether the otherworldly is taking center stage or remaining an undercurrent on Moon Sessions, Richeson grounds the album with strong songwriting. Moments like “Her Decline” and the soaring instrumental in the second half of “Blind Whispers” give shading to this lunar song cycle, but the more straightforward acoustic folk songs are the ones I find myself coming back to the most. The steady strumming of “Little One” anchors the song’s unspooling fable, while “All This Moonlight” splits the difference between a lo-fi take on country music and ethereal folk (Chorus: “Oh, you sure look alright / In all this moonlight”) and also features an excellent melodica solo. If you’ve ever been so awestruck by the moon that it’s literally knocked you off of your feet, this album’s for you. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns is back, this time talking about four new releases. I’m covering the newest LP from Fishboy, as well as EPs from This Is Lorelei, Oblivz, and The Royal Arctic Institute.
As always, be sure to check out previous Pressing Concerns for more new music. Expect another one of these next week, and I’m also working on something else exciting that should be done soon.
Fishboy – Waitsgiving
Release date: April 2nd Record label: Lauren Genre: Power pop, twee pop, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Greatness Waitress
Waitsgiving, the latest album from Denton’s Fishboy, is an intricate, detailed work of indie rock storytelling that weaves a cohesive and unique narrative across ten songs, forty years, and three generations of characters. Singer and bandleader Eric Michener isn’t deterred at all by the fact that such unabashedly lyrical works are usually reserved for the likes of progressive rockers and other music genres noted for grandiosity. Instead, Fishboy gleefully marry their pop rock instrumentals to Michener’s grand tale. Musically, Fishboy recall the midpoint between Elephant Six orchestral pop and folk punk in which Nana Grizol often reside (another folk punker, Sean Bonnette of AJJ, makes a backing vocal appearance on “Snocone Creator”), and they use their relatively humble brand of folk rock as a launching pad for lofty ambitions like fellow Texans Okkervil River (particularly in the pivotal “Seventies Singer”). Meanwhile, the pontificating, limousine-commuting narrator of “Driver Choreographer” reads like a character John K. Samson would write.
It should be noted that those aforementioned acts are contemporaries of the long-running Fishboy project, rather than influences, and also that, for all those acts’ love of story-songs, none of them have ever made a record-long narrative as clear as that of Waitsgiving. It’s the first record I’ve covered here that could legitimately be described as needing spoiler warnings. With that in mind, I won’t go too heavily into the plot of Waitsgiving, except to say that one begins connecting the characters and threads together on the first listen and I was able to get the gist after a few times through, and also that Michener’s song-by-song discussions on the Fishboy website are helpful in filling any remaining gaps. Taking all of Waitsgiving in at once, it’s refreshing to hear a band just go for it like Fishboy have done here. Could the aggressive sincerity of record be read as “corny” for someone as “poisoned by irony” as this author is on occasion? Sure. But the album works for two reasons. One: the album’s celebration of the creation of art for art’s sake has been well-earned by Michener and Fishboy, who have been doing just that for nearly two decades. When Michener sings, “If no one hears, that don’t mean a song shouldn’t be sung”, he’s in character, but it’s clear that the author is right there with the Bass Digger. Second, and just as importantly: Waitsgiving has the songs to back up their conceptual moon-shot (and then some). It’s does seem little ironic that a concept album about waiting serves up songs as immediate and catchy as “Greatness Waitress” and “Drive Choreographer”. But irony doesn’t have anything to do with it—if there’s anything to take from Waitsgiving, it’s that these songs would be just as valuable if we weren’t hearing them. (Bandcamp link)
This Is Lorelei – Bad Forever
Release date: April 2nd Record label: Wharf Cat Genre: Pop punk Formats: Digital Pull track: Garbage
Nate Amos wants to be bad forever. His solo project, This Is Lorelei, has been churning out a steady stream of singles and EPs over the past few months (I’ve highlighted some songs from a couple of them) but the latest release under his moniker stands a cut above the others. Bad Forever, which plows through nine songs in about a dozen minutes, finds Amos with the guitars cranked up, in full pop punk mode. It’s (yet another) left turn for This Is Lorelei, but one that makes sense for the versatile yet typically hooky music made by Amos. The ripping, hard-charging rock band fare of Bad Forever is sloppier and, in a sense, trashier than the (relatively) more restrained, measured textures of the usual This Is Lorelei output—and Amos’ lyrics rise to the occasion. “I know that I’m garbage, but why the hell you throwing me out?” he cracks in “Garbage”, while the nightmare trip of “Unhappy/Acid” is effectively a Blink-182 song from a darker (in theme, not quality) timeline.
Amos gets an assist from Lily Konigsberg and Ani Ivry-Block of Palberta, who feature prominently throughout Bad Forever. Although at least one of them sings backing vocals on almost every song, the staggered a capella intro to “Another Banger” qualifies as the most Palberta moment on the EP. Elsewhere, they take on the function of a Greek chorus to some of Amos’ wilder lyrical moments: “You’re a shit talk man! Well, you’re not that bad…” they shout over the penultimate rave-up of “Crack”. Amos comes off as teetering on the edge of something throughout the frenetic pace of Bad Forever. That he broke out his pop punk banger persona for these songs in particular almost feels like he’s partying through it—when he says he “wants to fucking go” in the fuzz-fest “Laughing”, I wouldn’t test him. All of this gives the closing title track—an acoustic number whose reflective lyrics come in the form of a duet—a surprising weight. How unexpected, and beautiful. (Bandcamp link)
Oblivz – Uplifts
Release date: April 5th Record label: Self-released Genre: Synthpop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Time Cop
Oblivz is Charlie Wilmoth and Andrew Slater, who are (slightly) more well-known as half of the Pittsburgh/Morgantown rock band Fox Japan. Their main project released the excellent album What We’re Not last year, but while that record recalled vintage guitar pop bands like The Chills and Teenage Fanclub, Oblivz veers headfirst into electronic territory. Slater does interject his guitar into Uplifts’ four tracks (his triumphant riff at the end of “Two Is Impossible” is a highlight), but there’s no mistaking this for anything but a synthpop EP through and through. Neither Wilmoth nor Slater live near each other anymore (the former is in Los Angeles and the latter in Bloomington, Indiana), so Uplifts was constructed remotely last year. Its existence is a product of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is reflected in the opening track, “Eat Shit”. The song floats along over a mid-tempo drum machine and synths, which belie its scared and angry lyrics. It captures the feeling of helplessness in the face of an uncaring world that’s only been exacerbated since last March, and distracting oneself with mindless streaming content just to carry on. “Life is rough but entertainment’s cheap,” laments whichever of the two is singing at that point in the song.
Oblivz has admitted that the band’s lyrics don’t stray far from those of Fox Japan, and there’s certainly familiarity in the darkly humorous “Only the Weak Survive” (featuring the brag “You could knock me over with a feather duster, kid, so come on” over swelling synth strings) and in “Two Is Impossible”’s tale of struggle and futility. Most fascinating to me are the thorny words behind the treadmill-pop of “Time Cop”. I asked my partner what they thought the titular phrase was, and it made them think of the voice inside one’s head that criticizes every moment that isn’t being spent on “productivity”. I was thinking more along the lines of how social media can destroy the idea of time in any meaningful sense of the word (key line: “I can’t live my life on the Internet / Because I can’t feel alive on the Internet”), and it probably has something to do with the pandemic too, but either way, “Time Cop” has a chorus hook that rivals anything from Fox Japan. None of their main band’s wit has been lost in translation, and Wilmoth and Slater have proven themselves to be just as deft at constructing this kind of music with Oblivz. (Bandcamp link)
The Royal Arctic Institute – Sodium Light
Release date: April 2nd Record label: Rhyme & Reason Genre: Post-rock, jazz rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Tomorrowmorrow Land
New York’s Royal Arctic Institute are an instrumental group that makes “post-punk, cinematic jazz” and cites both Slint and Dick Dale as influences. The band’s various members all have impressive pedigrees, having shared stages or recording studios with the likes of Roky Erickson (guitarist John Leon), Townes Van Zandt (bassist David Motamed), and Arthur Lee (both Motamed and drummer Lyle Hysen). This collection of musicians (which, for this release, are rounded out by lead guitarist Lynn Wright and keyboardist Carl Baggaley) could probably play just about anything they wanted, which lends some extra weight to the deliberate musical choices they make and what they evoke on their latest EP, Sodium Light. “Tomorrowmorrow Land” opens the record up with some languid guitar work, but Hysen’s steady drumbeat doesn’t let the song drift off into “sleepy” territory—it’s all upbeat and alert. The track slowly builds to an eventful second half that features percussion crashes, keyboard stabs, and busy bass playing from Motamed underscoring it all.
Sodium Light’s middle section is where the band allow the songs to wander a bit. The relatively sparse percussion of “Different in Sodium Light” lets Wright fill the space with delicate solos, while Leon lets his guitar playing drift in and out of “13 Christmases at Sea”, content to let the instrument reverberate as the rest of the band leisurely move along. The strutting of closing track “Prince of Wisconsin” is the most overtly jazzy The Royal Arctic Institute get on this EP—it’s also the one song where Baggaley lets his playing loose, rather than showing restraint in service of the record’s overall atmosphere. If Sodium Light is the cinematic experience that The Royal Arctic Institute strive to evoke, then “Prince of Wisconsin” is the jaunty closing credits number that plays the audience out and lets them know that the long journey is now over. It’s an ending note of hope from the band, who created this EP in the midst of a global pandemic and I’m sure would love to get a chance to play these songs for an audience before the next Royal Arctic Institute release comes around. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 